Coptus Interruptus
by rosiespleen
Summary: It's slow at the precinct. No murder to solve has them killing time, playing games, making conversation, thinking about going home early or contemplating pranks on Sir Gates. But for Beckett and Castle? They just can't seem to get any alone time.
1. Chapter 1

**Coz anticipation is like a balloon. One prick and it's gone**

_Picking up on a couple of things said in recent interviews from the actress wot plays Beckett: she's crazy about Castle, and SK would love to be in an episode that's a bit Seinfeld-like — no murder for the day, but a lot of other stuff going on. This'll tend to be a little cracky, with a hint of canon and a lot of au. See, I'm not really sure how to genre-ize it, sorry, but I hope it will be a bit of fun. I'm aiming for short, salacious chapters and will attempt to update weekly._

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><p>It's the lingering look after his scantily clad comment that has her fixating on taking up his offer to peruse his issues.<em> At any time,<em> Castle had said, and she'd felt the vertical extent of his own perusal as she pretended to focus on his comic collection.

The trail for the killer might have grown cooler at that particular moment, but Castle's invitation had all of Kate's spidey senses tingling in the most inappropriate places. When was it that she'd decreed herself unable to be in the relationship she really wanted? She must have been postoperative, immersed in PTSD or _just plain MENTAL_. She'd forgotten about the primal urge of lust.

There are relationships, then there is this relationship. There are men, but there is _this_ man and (apparently) there are feelings of liking and desire ... but then there's love. And when it's coupled — quadrupled — with all this physical stuff naffling at her noggin and doppling at her ganger?

Um, yeah. Kate Beckett is so fried. She's also conjuring fake words, using English incorrectly and catching herself watching him when she should be working.

She's been in _it _before, hasn't she? She's _felt_ stuff. Like wanting to smile whenever she thinks about a significant other? Yes ... um, no ... not really. Like wondering what he's thinking or doing most of her waking hours. Um ... _No, not usually. She liked Josh, right, but did she really think about him at the hospital while she was going about her day? _ Ahhh, that'd be 'mostly, no.'

Well, she has encountered that situation where her nipples go berserk when she's being kissed and touched. She _has_ been horny enough to make love in a car, she's enjoyed the company of men enough to buy them birthday gifts, meet them for dinner, hold hands in the movies, meet family members ...

But yeah. She is so fried. With Castle. Egg and bacon fried, hot, spiced, searing round the edges and bubbling on the surface. Spitting and hissing with this thing that has her spinning and grinning and wondering just how much of the wall needs pulling down before she's ready to reach into his pants and feel for any remaining edifice that might linger.

His brick is sure to be hard. His foundations are gonna be upright. The uppermost top of his own wall is going to be easy to mount ... but this line of inquiry is causing her eyes to cross and her legs to blink.

Kate had forgotten about the urgent demand of lust. She hadn't even imagined the power of it when it's partnered with this other thing. This emotion. This crazy, hazy, wanna-make-lazy-time love.

Not only is she fried, she's possibly gonna eat her words, which is just something the Beckett of old would never, _ever_ do within the vicinity of Richard Castle. But between him geeking out about comic books, trying to impress Sir Frosty Gates, and asking if she'd be scantily dressed as a superhero, she's starting to think that her declaration on the swings was simply buying her time.

Buying her some time to drive herself insane!

When she'd stood beside Castle, watching Ann and her guy spindle into face touching and an elevator make-out session, Beckett felt her own legs turn to hot fudge sauce. She wanted to puddle on the ground in the middle of the precinct, sludge out to some quiet space and invite Castle to be her banana split. Somehow, she was able to don her game face. Work is ultra-helpful in this situation, she's discovering, and maybe it always has been? Kate's able to apply stealth to her Castle viewing, indifference to her cheekbones, and squishy repression to the grin that threatens to erupt from her lips at any given time she's watching him.

The other, more ardent, physical reactions? She's damn lucky that they remain discreetly tucked away between the top of her heels and the bottom of her scar.

She's forgotten about the urge, way down there, way down real low — but whoa! She had that urgency with Tom, she'd just had it with Josh — she really, really had — but this is something else. This is like comparing the swoosh of a Buell Blast between her legs with the_ throb_ of a Harley-Davidson CVO spiraling into her own gearbox. Suddenly, Kate has needs that she hasn't recognized before. She wants to taste, touch and stroke, have her hair messed. _ Right about now! _ She wants lips pressed into a mouth that she is sure is as talented as she dreamt ... yeah, that dream ...

That very morning, in fact.

Kate had awoken to a strange sensation flooding her body. At first she'd thought it was the remnants of the night sweats she'd encountered during her recovery, where the only thing that had pulsated was her healing scar and the only other things that had moistened were her forehead and bedding. Oh, and the only thing coming was her next round of physiotherapy or medication.

But this morning?

Her face had been hot, but not wet, and her scar had been tight, but not humping. There was moisture around after this particular Castle dream, but it was nowhere near her cheeks — unless she counted those under her nightwear — and, jeez, there was throbbing like a Harley CVO machine of throbster.

Kate had been so churned up by the intensity of the early morning dream, she couldn't see straight until her second cup of coffee. It was as though an alien form had descended from the Planet of Lovin' Porn, planted an army of machines along all her zones of sensuality, and upped the stimulation from a computer hard drive of zap.

It had been _that_ weird. And _that_ much of a thrill ride, she'd reached beneath her sheet, found the exact spot where she needed just that little bit ... more ... _oh_ ... pressure from that army of loving ... right there ... and—

The cellphone had made her jump. Kate had retracted her hand as though she'd been caught touching the last nub of brick in what remained of her wall, and although she didn't want to use her serious words to Castle on the swing as some sort of kinky, analogical farce, she kept thinking about tearing the facade down.

She wanted to bash it down. Bit by bit, brick by brick, so that the fortress of her castle will be open — so very, very open — to the flood of the moat, but Richard Edgar Alexander? The guy must be confused because she's only recently decreed her own keep as a no-go zone. Kate might just have to be more direct in her redrawing of the sexual battle-lines.

'Beckett,' she had said, scrambling to make her morning voice sound professional, even though her thoughts were still on the dream. If anything was going to clear her head of heat and lust, it was the freeze-tone of Captain Deli Gates, a woman who was earning herself a new nickname every single time she opened her mouth at the precinct.

'I'd like you here a little earlier today, Detective,' Gates had ordered over the phone. Kate hadn't expected a 'good morning, sweetie, would you be good enough to be downtown for a breakfast meeting, please,' but a simple 'hello, Detective Beckett' would have been appreciated.

They were cops, fine. Didn't mean that they had to speak to each other like pigs.

'Of course ... _Sir_. When were you think—'

'ASAP, Detective. Unfortunately this can't wait.'

_Yeah, but neither can her own needs way down yonder, where the castle iron gates are about to encounter a Squadron of Penetrative Members ready to storm the—_

'And you need to notify your pal. Mr Castle is very much involved in this ... how will I put it? _Dawn raid?_'

Kate hears the supercilious inflection in Gates's voice and she can imagine that Sir is sneering into her own cell piece. Pity she's not the type of girl-captain that an aroused detective can share a story with. There's nothing more that Beckett would like to do than to grill 'oh, yeah, Castle is _very_ much involved with his own dawn raid at my place too. Lemme tell you about the dream I just had ...' into the phone, rasping out exactly how she's feeling to her captain. Her mentor.

Yeah, like that would happen. Like Beckett would share the dream with anyone, even Castle. _Especially_ Castle, although if she were able to play for time now, tell Gates that she needs a shower to wake herself up, a little alone time to get her into her detective zone, Beckett would be able to use her own fingers to lace into that spot—

'I expect you're on you way, Detective!' Gates slams into the phone. 'Have you called _your_ Mr Castle, yet?'

If Gates wasn't so by-the-book, Kate would suspect that the new captain had a webcam threaded along the streets of NYC and hooked into somewhere between the Beckett bedroom and her brain. Talk about mood killer. The fact that Roy would have given a girl some time to get moving in the morning before she—

'I said _ASAP,_ BECKETT!'

Before Kate can process another negative thought about Deli Gates or more of the profane about Castle, her captain has shut off communication, and try as she might to shut off the orders, the cop in Beckett responds. She speed dials Castle while grabbing some clothes and running a one minute shower. Not even time to consider the root of her wall foundations or feel for a brick or two.

'Dial sleepy time for Richard Castle,' comes the deep throat of sexy. It's 5am. Beckett imagines him in his boxers and bed hair, pillow flattened from face interaction, whiskers buffed and brittle. She wonders if she'll wake him round about that time on some mornings in the future, when the only thing that stands between them is skin, skimp and scars.

'Beckett?'

She'll take his hand from where it rests atop her hipbone and guide it. He's sure to still be asleep, on his side, snuggling her from behind, but she'll be restless, edgy and want his fingers to—

_'Kate?'_

His urgency floods her earpiece like the surge of sexual moat into her castle buttress. The shower screams 'waste-of-hot-water' and Beckett's cop instincts clog over her deviant thoughts. Only just.

'Oh, Castle,'

_Wrong start, Kate. _ She immediately conjures all those moments when she's going to be moaning that very same phrase, and none of the pictures in her porn-house of a brain have her clothed in anything but a smile.

'Is everything okay, Kate?'

He speaks into his cell as though his vocal chords have been gargled in gasoline and pumped into pureed groan seeds. And _no_, she's not okay, thanks very naked-touch much. She wants him every-which-way-till-Sunday, longs to fumble nude and free in the Hamptons, yearns to — rather bizarrely — squander time while performing graphic gymnastic routines on her mattress, and desperately needs to retract her 'I'm not ready!' declaration.

_What the hell was she thinking a month ago?_

'Beckett? Is there a body? Is someone stiff?'

Um, how to answer _that_ one. Probably someone, somewhere is stiff and she's sure if she had the correct equipment, she'd be feeling that way right about now.

His voice smokes hot worry, but all she can focus on is his use of the words 'stiff' and 'body'. 'Bod-_dee_'. Yeah, that's what she wants. A body. _His_. Anywhere south of her equator and north of his pole. Everywhere. With the immediacy of a spinning globe.

'Okay, Kate! Stay where you are. I'm coming over. I'm coming.'

It hits her like a spasm in the shower. He's coming. _Coming now? Coming already?_ But she's missed all the preliminaries, and that's exactly how this state of mind, and body, started. That _dream_. It focused entirely on all such preliminaries, climaxed in a spurt of so, so, so desperately close, only to have her awaken to the phone call of Gated doom.

_Shit! _Gates. Castle and the precinct. ASAP, BECKETT, dawn raids, 'your' Mr Castle.

Warring with the pheromones responsible for anything Richard Castle — her Castlemoans? — Kate takes her frustrations out on the soap pump, wallops the faucet closed and jumps out of the shower to pick up the phone she'd left on 'speaker' as she speed-washed.

Mumbling a jumble of apologies including her not being in any danger, the (disappointing) lack of stiffness and bodies, and the order to get down to the precinct for a breakfast meeting with Captain Ahab, Kate almost misses Castle's observation:

'Ah, but Ahab was a tyrant.'

She doesn't, and it causes her to smile more than she should, snortle more than she thought possible with such newly-mended skin, and flush. It seems the Castlemoans eliciting those pheromones just keep bobbing up and whetting her wares.

'So the difference between Gates and Ahab _is_?' she chirps, rattling round for her keys, securing her watch, threading her mother's ring between her scar and hairline. 'You up?'

_Kate! For the love of God! What sort of question is that?_

It's too late to retract the double entendre, she can hear the rumble of his own appreciation, straight from that downy-haired chest into her earpiece. Not that she's looked. Um, _at her earpiece_, but his chest hairs do have the tendency to peak very hotly at the opening of his shirts, especially if he leans over her desk.

And that chest cavity, which is encased by two swaddling sets of biceps either side, would be like a cavernous, squashy jam when she needs to be held—

'I'm often up.' His response is quite expected, but followed by, 'at this time of the morning,' has Beckett's face spinning and head aglow. Oh, she bets he is, and she wouldn't waste a week's salary wagering against it.

'Meet you in there?' she offers, willing her body to be still its achey betrayal of all things Castle want. She briefly wonders when she'll have the chance to set things right today. Whether she'll simply say something while they're driving to a crime scene, whether she'll pull in somewhere for lunch and feel him up in the car, whether she'll invite him home for a takeout dinner and some dream reenactment, or whether she'll just tell him.

'I'll meet you anywhere, Beckett,' he says into the phone, the (possible) silk of his boxer shorts nothing compared to his voice. 'And don't think I'll let that Captain Ahab thing go. We might even have a whale of a time today.'

Snipping off her cell and deciding on her helmet instead of her car keys, she thinks about the wisdom of asking him whether a white whale can also be a sperm whale or if it's safe to explore blowholes under the tyrannical eye of Captain Ahab.

Kate elects to leave the seaman metaphors for later.

**TBC. ** (I should probably warn readers that this may be a screwball tease of a thing. If you don't like that type of read — and we all like the instant gratification now and then ; ) — it might be a little frustrating. Still, hopefully, there might be something in each chapter to make you smile : D


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks for the great words of encouragement for this chaotic multi-part story. Not everything is rude or filled with double entendre, it must be ALL in the minds of readers *g*_

_Warnings for this chapter: overuse of em dash and ellipsis, a bit of bad language and an original character._

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><p><strong>Coz anticipation is like a threadbare sheet. One poke and it's holey<strong>

He's a ball of confuselment. A snuffly bug of super-energy in the wrapper of a man. A wobbly wabbit of _yes, she wants me, no, she's waiting. Maybe, it'll be tonight as long as she was referring to me on the swings and not some other random relationship._ He even feels like a pod of tightly packed uber-whales, swimming upstream against a flagging rudder that doesn't know whether to be stiff, soft, flat, flimsy, pert, puckered or penetrable.

He doubts he's ever been so confuzzled in his life.

Castle also appears unable to pronounce the word _confused_ in his mind and has been working through the Captain Ahab reference for the entire first part of the trip into the precinct. Had Beckett been hinting at something to do with Moby Dick, with emphasis on the second word? Did Kate think he had magnificent gills, or does she want to check his under carriages in case of barnacles? Would he and Beckett take on the role of seafaring mutineers, throw Captain Ahab Gates overboard during the day, while making bodice-ripping, gale-force love as the sun sets over the watery horizon?

It's more than likely he's in the mental doldrums.

The day she'd told him about her wall, he'd been ready to mount something — perhaps a white steed, perhaps a bulldozer — and bludgeon through it with the force of a Josh shove in a hospital waiting area. But if Doctor Motorcycle boy couldn't smash down the Beckett Barricade, then there's no use Castle thinking about that particular analogy. He is already closer to crumbling the erection than Josh. Beckett's _wall_, her brick erection, he means, rather than other things, the other erect things ... you know ... there's that itoo/i, but he's referring to her walls of erection ...

Oh, who is he kidding?

When she'd smiled at him in front of the cover of the Derrick Storm graphic novel and told him that she was ordering one to be supportive, he wanted to bullock against the Beckett Barricade with his own head. He'd decided against it when he weighed up that lapsing into unconsciousness was sure to affect his libido, and that a non-responsive Castle was worse than an unprotected turret.

He thinks so anyway.

And when she'd alluded to her breasts being naturally enhanced enough without the need for implants, he donned his best fraternal face, tried to imagine what a brother might do in that sort of situation, and attempted to laugh it off. What he really wanted to do was to laugh her ibra/i off, but it was neither the time nor the place to poke a hole in her wares ... um, that'd be _WALLS,_ Castle!

_Walls_?

Oh no! Now there might be more than one? At this rate, he'll be seventy years old, won't be able to remember what sixty-nine felt like — not with Beckett, anyway — and he'll be ramming his old man fists into her walls and complaining of osteoporotic breaks to the fingers. If he gets further than her opened gates.

_Urgh. Iron Gates. Captain PermaFrost_.

But back to Beckett's Barricades. The only female-made Everests on the planet, more multiple than the Great One of China, so numerous and massive, they can be seen from his property on the moon.

With the naked eye. With the naked _anything_, because if it's Beckett and nudity, he's there with bells on, if that's what takes her fancy. Hmm, or a bow? Yes, perhaps a bow ...

The cab swerves as it takes a corner, and he stops himself asking the driver to slow down in case they hit one of the Beckett Barricades. Or even a wall! He doesn't want to be involved in a car wreck on the familiar route to the precinct, especially after he's been specifically requested for an audience with Captain Ahab. Castle has nearly died twice this morning already due to massive reactions threading through his newly-awakened body. He almost choked to death when Beckett has asked if he was '_up_' — um, without going into too much detail, there really was no question about that — and the second time, he'd nearly suffered from asphyxiation to the lower part of his body.

If he tried to explain that to his cab driver of the moment, Castle is sure the learned man would think that Lower Body Asphyxiation was a fictional condition. However, while researching unusual deaths for 'Storm Approaching', he'd unearthed the story of a man who had dropped dead the moment he stood from his bed due to the sudden rush of toxic blood.

Castle had _pressed_ his own lower body so earnestly into his mattress while Kate had been making little subconscious sounds in his ear, pausing and drawing breath while on the phone, that when he finally got out of bed, his entire hormonally-loaded blood stream had surged south. He'd been dizzy. It was almost as if he had run around in circles at the bottom of her wall trying to find the exact way to come at it

_Them_.

Um, to penetrate them. The walls. The erect Barricades of Beckett.

He leans his head against the backseat of the cab. If there are now multiple walls on the inside, will there be a multiple payoff once the Beckett Barricades are breached? He certainly thinks so, but it's going to take a handy man — a very dextrous and highly-skilled-of-finger man — to be able to reach right up, slip inside and start to stroke those very mountable—

'_Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoooooa!_ What the hell?'

Castle is flung out of his erotic imaginings by the sharpest braking interaction he's had since Kate threw him out of her bed during his dream last Friday night. _Now that_ _had been an amazing dream, but he can't think about that while his face is implanted into_ _the rear headrest of the front seat._ It's lucky it's only his cheek pressed into the headrest, as his lower regions are so rigid, he doubts they would have survived much impact.

_Snapped off_ comes to mind and it makes him shuffle back into his seat in a hurry.

'Oh, man! Dude, I'm so, so sorry,' says his cab driver, flicking at his dreadies and using his non-driving hand to worry his goatee between his thumb and forefinger. 'But fuck me, brother, lookit THAT. Can you really blame me?'

Castle is about to utter something about inappropriate language and offer general paternal advice about running a comb through one's hair and getting it cut once in a while, when his attention is drawn to exactly what's happening outside. Wow, but they're already within walking distance of the precinct, he'd been so involved in extracting every last bit of double entendre from Beckett's Barricades that he hadn't realized what's going on out—

_Oh, but that's ... that's ..._

_No, it's not ... it's not ... oh, but God, yes it is. It really is!_

_But ... but ... how can it be ...? How. Can. Thatbeeee ..._

'Brother? Do you see what I'm seeing?'

Castle most certainly is, but he has enough presence of mind (the part that's not wading through the gutter nearest her stopped Harley) to close the mouth that's been ajar and the eyes that have been drooling. How long have they been stopped, _looking? _ Castle could check to see if the cab metre is still running and deduce from there, but he cannot glance away.

Why would he?

'Man? Do you see that?'

_Um, maybe to tell the cabbie to shut the hell up._

'Yes, yes, I see,' he snaps, in two-minds about whether to congratulate Cab Driver Dreadlocks for his amazing taste in the female form, despite having hair that appears to be woven from muddied sackcloth. 'I do see, _brother._ But I'll have you know ... I'll have you know ... that ... that ... that particular ... person ... woman ... oh, _yeahhhhhhhh .._.'

Ignoring the fact that Cabbie Dreadlocks has made exactly the same exclamation from the front seat and appears to be licking the inner window pane of his car, Castle tilts his head sideways to see just what Beckett is doing to her bike. _What she's doing to her bike while wearing jeans and leather. Um, what she's doing riding her bike IN jeans and leather on the way to the precinct as dawn is breaking over the horizon and ..._

Then the hair spills.

And it's like a fucking fountain of life, immortality, fortune, fame and other stuff he just doesn't really know what to do with ...

If Castle was writing prose about this particular scene, he mightn't know where to start. Maybe with her stance, although that would totally denying that the hair ... _oh, sweet jesu! the HAIR_ ... isn't the main character in this 'Ode to the Beauty of Beckett and her Barricades'.

Perhaps he would write about her position — one leg hoisted over the seat of her bike — and couple it with the riveting line of her body, as she perches low, almost horizontal above the front gas-tank. Or he could wax lyrical about her clenched fists, working against the non-functioning clutch, tensing against the handle grips, pumping in anticipation of firing up the machine. Fisting. Grasping. Working the holds?

_If only._

But ultimately, he'd describe the point at which she disembarks — that _butt_, he hasn't watched it so closely since the night in the club when she walked away from him to dance around Oz — and the _hair_. Castle would be able to write an entire chapter on Beckett's dismount, and his fingers would hit the keyboard with the speed with which they want to zoom into her hair.

Because, yeah her hair? It's what has Cab Driver Dreadlocks and himself _ooooohing_ into a squirm as they steam up the inside of their taxi.

_Just ... ewwwwww_, but Beckett draws Castle back in before he can puff a word to The Dreadlocked or offer him money to get the cab outta there and stop watching the bike barricade fall.

Beckett removes her helmet like he'd expect her to emerge from beneath his duvet. She pushes up so incredibly slowly, _sooooo slow-er-ly_, it hurts Castle to anticipate. He's never experienced physical pain from anticipation before, and it's not just a general discomfort in the nookie region of his boxers. It pounds his head, lobs balls against the back of his eyelids, crisps his heart to a hot, soft pulp, and hardens the rest of his muscles into the shape of a beanpole.

No, that's just within the nookie region, it seems.

The helmet is lifted like a black, waxy trophy, and then the hair? It waterfalls, again. And again. Oh, then some more. It descends in a tussle of browns and blondes, curls and muss and treacle-softness made for his fingers to lick. Or flick. Or suck. He doesn't know and he really doesn't care which alternative is given. All Castle wants to do is go and sit astride her seat, grin at her hair and run his hands through its softness, only to end up with palming that place at the base of her neck where he can see a hint of skin between her leather and ... and ... and ...

Sigh! _Hair._

As though she knows she has an audience — or even so that she can see more easily? — she stands fully, bends forward from the hips and whips her hair over into a full tousle. She's so dishevelled, he feels the need to smooth everything, so rumpled, Castle wants to handle. It's all so much about nature, nurture, visual, visceral ... hair ... porn, that Castle is simply overcome by this one-man eye-gratification scene.

Actually, _two_ men. He has to pay this perverted Dready so he can chug his grotesque, sleazy cab to the other side of NYC and find his own hair-licious babe to watch. Beckett's Barricades are all his. Castle's not sharing a single one of her erections.

'Dooooood? Who _is_ this chick?' mutters Cab Driver Dreadlocks, just as Detective Beckett gets wind of a stationary cab lurking suspiciously at the scene of the hair-shrine, and comes over with her badge peeking past her leather coat. 'Oh, man! She's a _cop_ as well? Now that's so damned hot! I'm dying here.'

'And that's quite enough out of _you,_' says Castle, hurriedly reaching for his wallet and shunting a wad of money and a look of disdain towards his driver. He opens the door the very instant that Kate moves in on the cab, looking to ask someone to roll down a window so she can assess the situation. Seconds ago, that 'situation' might have involved him, with his mouth stuck to the window like a suckerfish adheres to his favourite piece of the goldfish bowl.

If a suckerfish is allowed in a goldfish bowl? But that's neither here nor there, and only takes his morning mind back to Moby's Dick, Captain Ahab and Sperm versus White whales when he should be thinking about the meeting with Captain Subja Gates.

_'Castle?_' says the hair-liscious one, throwing him that sexy surprised look. Castle shuts the door on Dreadlock cabbie and feels the growl of the dirty motor as the vehicle drives away with the grunge of webbed locks flapping behind.

'Kate!' he says with a smile and a spring to his step, and his boxers. 'Thought it was you, but couldn't be sure, being on your ...' he gulps, as if by saying _it_, he might have a coronary. 'Bike, and all ... and the totally unexpected leather, well, what you're wearing ... the leather, and ...'

Castle trails off when he sees something in Beckett's face that spanks of bemusement ... um ... if 'bemusement' is a hot enough word for a grin that is equal-parts delighted, teasing, romantic, captivated. God, for a man who could read this woman's backstory within a week of knowing her, he's certainly become a less perceptive study. Maybe he's blinded by all the seafaring talk from earlier.

She steps towards him, helmet in hand and his knees go slightly askew when he imagines his very own helmet in hand. _Hers_.

'I decided to ride in today, Castle. Wanted to roar up to the meeting with Deli Gates and do some burnouts on police property.' She dips her head the instant he looks at her mouth. She's close enough to him that only one very small helmet would fit between them. Luckily, her motorcycle one is at her side.

'You ... _rode?'_

'Ah, _yeah!_' She knows his knees are weak, he's sure, but she continues on as if the notion of 'riding' couldn't be interpreted sexually. 'But the bike cut out. I was having trouble starting it when you came along, and spent ... what, an _hour_ in the back of that cab with that guy?'

He laughs. To cover his tracks, to buy him time. To extend their scoreboards of secrets and lies to 2-1 in his favour, because he knows. He's always known that she knows (and perhaps she knows he knows that she knows?) and today he is going to remedy everything. By the time the sun dips low over the Harley chassis, she'll be owning her remembrance of the cemetery declaration, be hot in his palm, be nubile in his noobs ...

'We were disagreeing over the fare.'

'Really?' she quips, turning back to her bike and laying her hands all over the leather of the seat as though feeling for a distention it just doesn't have. 'I thought you were going to offer a girl a ride, take pity on a broken-down, _mount_less biker. _Chick_.'

'I-I- um ... I thought you'd—'

'Did you think I'd rather walk than ride, Castle?' she says, over her shoulder as she slinks the lengthiest leg in the world over that freakishly lucky seat with no distention. There's only one palpable thing alive at this dawn, at this very moment, and it's nowhere near her seat. Unfortunately. 'Riding is so much better than walking. Than anything, really, except for the best ever ... for the best ... ever ... _ohhhhh_ ...'

_Damnit Beckett! _ Not only did she have him at 'mountless', she also cut off the end of her description with the roar of a sick engine wanting to ride onwards. Upwards. _Inwards,_ and as she makes to reapply her helmet as some women would their lipstick, Castle wants nothing more than to write this scene with a distended suckerfish piece of her hair.

Dipped in ink.

A leather-clad hand reaches out from within the fumes and the dust of dawn to pull him towards the grunt of the bike, and he steps into the space as readily as Dick stepped into the magic land of the Faraway Tree trunk.

'Get on, _Rick'_. The cops won't care you don't have a helmet.'

Castle would laugh or conjure crass thing in his mind if he wasn't so aroused by riding behind Beckett in leather and (quite possibly) lace with only her hips to hold on to and the inside of his thighs pressing into her posterior Barricade.

'Let's show Gates what we can do on a bike!' she says.

As they pull away from the spot on the sidewalk, Castle suddenly loves being one wobbly ball of confuselment.


	3. Chapter 3

_Just a quick thank you for the comments left on this story. I appreciate the feedback and read each one with great thought. More of the same emphasis here, on chaotic love, crazy thoughts, hormone-fueled desires. _

_Warnings for the chapter: swearing and leather.  
><em>

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><p><strong>coz anticipation is like stream-of-consciousness writing: one period and it's gone<strong>

As soon as Castle is on the seat behind her, Beckett knows she's made a mistake. They're only minutes from the precinct, but her mind drifts to a beach somewhere. They're riding her bike, dressed in sarongs or khaki shorts, bikinis, flip flops or shirts previously buttoned and now ripped to the waistband of low-slung cargoes.

It's not the city weather that's floating the beach scene in the back of her vision. It's not the dawn lighting of NYC, the rush of water through her hearing, the smell of surf and sand. It's the pure sexual adrenalin. The hot shock of a warm body pinned to her back. The feel of the seat between her thighs and the man-bolt wedged to that part of her arse wanting to be touched. It's the fact that if she could transplant them anywhere — be doing _anything_ with him, and to him, right now — she'd have him on the back of a beach bike, skirting the waves, while half-dressed, half-drunk on sensuous holiday sun, half-done on the thought of what they're about to do when they get back to their private beach house.

Because, yeah, everything would be really private. And oh-kay, she would have already done him on the beach while the sun set the night before, and had him in the private — oh, so private — yacht that noodles their part of the bay. She might even have prodded him to join the Mile High Club _en route_ to their first vacation in paradise. He'd have definitely prodded _her._In first class, probably.

In fantasy land, Kate and Rick have done these things already, but to have him on the luxurious wooden deck of their sun-drenched villa, overlooking the swell of the horizon, the nipples of sand dunes, the pure moist lush of vegetation ... it's setting her body aflame despite the fact that she's zooming along the city streets and she should be concentrating on—

'Um, Beckett? Slow down,' comes a voice muffled against her helmet, and she wonders if she's touching him too quickly on her fantasy holiday, if he needs a moment to adjust to her hand at the front of his shorts, her fingers inside his fly. 'You're coming too quickly. Slower! We're coming ... head-on ... hey, Kate! Slow it down ... um ... _now!_'

The beach scene draws-in and fades like a puckered bikini bottom to a butt crack. It's still _there_, but Castle's voice affects _everything_and so does the oncoming pylon that nearly collects her motorbike as she fails to navigate the opening to the precinct with her usual ease.

She must have sand in her eyes, beach love up her arse and ... and ... _phewwww_... and Castle's whiskers at her ear, hot and soakingly bothered. She shakes off her helmet without much thought to how the blow of her hair will affect his vision, and places it on the seat in front of her. She hears him utter something along the lines of 'um, wow', and can't deduce whether that relates to her hair in his face or the fact that his mouth is rimming the cusp of her lobe. His voice is textured with a mixture of excitement and fear.

'What happened there, Kate?' he washes into her aural sensitivity like a lick of tongue against the most risqué spots of her body. 'You were a million miles away. It's not like you. It's almost like you were riding in a stream-of-consciousness mind set. Are you nuts?'

She's not. The only thing to which she can attribute this temporary insanity, this apparent out-of-character babbling, is love. Lots of songs sing about love and 'crazy' in the same verse, many literary works tell of love stories and random acts of oddness. So if she's behaving unusually — fantasizing in bed, unable to speak to him on the phone with her typical clarity, driving her bike dangerously — she's not demented. _Not really_. She's a bundle of hormonal gabble and if she had Elektra's ninja skills right about now, she'd kick herself in the head.

Somehow, Kate has ambled her bike into the spot allocated under the precinct and killed the engine. If she thought she'd made a mistake letting Castle on the bike in the first place — what with his hands resting on opposing hip bones, him jolting each bump with exaggerated precision, and the depth of her beach imaginings — it's nothing compared to bringing the bike to a stop.

They're within precinct property, but not. It's dark and private, but not. The bike is in a small enough nook between a concrete wall and another vehicle, but not nearly secluded enough for him to start running his hands from her hip bones, up over the sides of her stomach to lean forward and work them over her outstretched arms. He rubs against the leather like he's trying to imprint the character onto his fingertips. Kate feels his chest fit against her back and it's all she can do to stop herself defying a direct order from her captain, turn the bike around and gun it to the Hamptons for some noodling on that yacht.

She wonders if he has a boat. She knows he has a rudder. She can feel the definite press of his steerage as surely as she can feel the ebb and sway of his breathing against her spine. Castle's frontage appears to fit to her back as readily as her bike fits into this parking nook, as easily as her thighs slide into her favourite jeans, as amazingly as her tongue dissolved into that white chocolate and raspberry ice-cream last night ... when all she could think about was what it would be like to share something like that with him.

From the same spoon. Sharing bits of ice-cream, mouth, tongue, cold hot. Them.

It's time to come clean.

About remembering his 'I love you' as well as the ice-cream fantasy, the dream she had on waking this morning, the thoughts she's been having since Castle asked if her superhero would be scantily clad. To come clean about the things racing through her mind since she'd seen the colourful lace that Serena had lying dormant in her underwear drawer. It's even time to come clean about the bitter pill she had to swallow when she saw Castle kissing the cocky art insurance barbie and how she'd fantasized about slamming Serena into the gym mat and twisting her head (and hair) in the biggest knot possible.

It's time to say something.

Sure, it's all totally complicated, what with the shooting, her near-death, the breakup with Josh, the PTSD, the recent exchanges of angst-ridden expressions and indecisive subtext. Maybe it's time to just breathe? To skank life by its horniest handle, shake for all it's worth, and give thanks for having a chance to explore the options that might have been denied had the bullet hit inches to the—

'Kate?'

She realizes she's shuffled her butt further backwards into the warmth of his lap. Over the moments they've been parked, his head has fallen to her right shoulder, his arms have threaded through the gap beneath her shoulders to start their stroking pattern, and the only thing stopping him from tonguing her neck is the flimsy collar of her leather jacket.

She can't be bothered speaking much. She can't be bothered doing much at all, and if that's so terribly out-of-character, then she _is_nuts and working the 'I'm crazy in love with him' angle. It's the first time she's felt this way. She's damn well gonna enjoy it.

'Beckett?'

'Hmm?'

'_Hmmming_' is the perfect response in this situation. It sets up a hum in her vocal cords, it vibrates through to her spine, it resonates in his chest and between his legs. She can feel it. _Him_. God, he must be hot in bed, she thinks for the twentieth time this morning. But it won't be about sexual ability alone. His body heat is enough to warm a small village in the northernmost reaches of Siberia and still provide flint for the spot fires in her own ... her own ...

Spots?

As though he reads her noncommittal responses — and the notion that she has woken up today as someone who is ready to take the horny bull by the ramming rod — he shifts his head slightly so his lips share the same air as her carotid pulse. It's worrying that she's almost slinking off her bike seat in a river of desire by the _idea_that he'll touch her there. What's going to happen if he ever decides to—

'You smell amazing. Like leather.'

It's not something she expected him to say, but the words create a gentle breeze against the sensitive parts on her nape and advise that his mouth is so close to her skin, she could instigate contact by moving half an inch.

_Leather? She smells like dead cowhide?_

'Castle, I ...'

She _what?_That she wants to tell him everything before she converts fantasies to reality? Or she doesn't want to speak because the energy is best conserved for the physical requirements of that step?

Kate opts for window number one.

'There's some things I have to say, Cas—'

The words are barely squeezed out of her rapidly drying mouth before she feels his lips brush aside the collar of her leather and sizzle against the soft skin beneath her ear. She shivers, and it's involuntary. So is the slight backward arch of her spine into his chest — as though they could possibly get any closer in this position on her bike — um, they _could_, but it'd involve her pivoting, straddling, pressing.

Speaking of pressing, Castle is using his mouth to dapple tiny kisses along the thick skid of muscle that works its way down to her collarbone, changing up pressure, throwing in some open-mouthed work and eventually some lathering of warmth and wet. Involuntarily, Kate tilts her head to the left, stifling an involuntary groan, blaming the sudden hustle between her legs on every involuntary reflex in her body.

She doesn't mean for it to happen — any of it, including the manic thoughts peppering her head and these pages — but it does, and she's blaming Control Centre Involuntary.

When her breasts squeak out for his hands to stop rubbing against her leather-clad arms and dip beneath her bra, it's involuntary. When her fingers stop gripping the bike's handlebar and find his thigh — goddamn involuntary. When a jettison of want and greed spurts way beyond her jean-line and taunts the area he's yet to touch, her Control Centre Involuntary puts out a plea bargain for more attention in her southern quadrant.

Strange. In her relationship with Castle thus far, it's always been about control. _Hers_. Now the lights have temporarily dimmed once, courtesy of a bullet to the chest, she lets her body dictate exactly how she's gonna feel in case there is no tomorrow.

'You were saying?'

She wasn't. Or maybe she was? Before he started nipping gently at her earlobe, whisking his own fingers over the hand she has on his thigh, nudging her cheek with his nose to encourage her to turn around for a more flagrant assault on her mouth.

It's what Kate has wanted, for as long as she's been aware of the curve to his bottom lip and how he reacts when she casts her eyes down at his smile. The undercover grope and grind has made her want it more. So much more.

'I was saying,' she repeats, twisting from her hips, working her way around so that she's got the outer part of one thigh riding his own. Her lower body starts to sit astride his — _involuntarily._Castle's hands are on her shoulders, through her hair, cradling the side of her face before she has time to think about what she was going to say, but as he reduces the space between their lips to one-millionth of a hair width, he offers her a final chance.

'You were going to say something before. After I said you smell amazing. Like leather.'

Despite the heat of the moment, the fact that her hips are arching upwards and inwards, and her heart is beating like a Captain Investy Gates whiplash, she laughs. It's not a belly laugh or a curlish giggle. It's a snorty affair. Toothy, breathy and it almost has enough forward momentum to snag their lips together in a kiss.

Castle pauses, crinkling his forehead in an amused frown. 'How is that funny, Detective Beckett?' He runs a hand through her helmet-mussed hair and she catches an involuntary sigh in the back of her throat. 'In my opinion, it's incredibly hot. To smell like leather.'

It shouldn't surprise her that a position so intimate — the near straddle of his lap, her hands toying with the front of his jacket, his fingers touching anything they can find with the precision of a writerly tap to the keyboard — can also be amusing. That he can make her laugh as easily as he can fire her charges. That he can draw humour from a lust-addled mind, and make her chuckle in her cheeks while setting fire to carnal catchments.

It's all so complicated.

'Do you polish this leather jacket, Beckett?' Castle whispers, trailing his lips so low, so close to her mouth, that she only need bunt her jaw muscles to snatch a taste of what he's grinning at; at what's making him speak in such earthenware tones. His voice is nearly the sexiest thing about Richard—

'It's so shiny, you must really buff it. Very, _very_buff.'

Although he's taking a heavy appraisal of her upper body, letting his eyes wander downward to the point where her top sits over the waistband of her jeans, he's still talking about her leather jacket. The beefy, throaty emphasis he puts on the word 'buff' is enough to distract her from the point of conversation. Which was?

'And perhaps you lick the dust off it when you get home home after a dirty day. Of riding.'

The jest hits the air with the subtlety of a sledge, the sexual allusions dive into her cleavage with the wish that his lips would follow. It's all over so quickly Kate's head spins before she can beat him to his repartee.

'Lucky, lucky leather jacket.'

All she can do is try _not_ to imagine him in her leather jacket, a little bit sweaty, a whole lot dirty, and the licking involved in whatever it is that they're doing at that particular moment. She _can't._She cannot unthink it! Everything about Kate Beckett is firing from Control Centre Involuntary, even her thoughts about him.

And her.

As if on cue, something in the atmosphere registers a sound from her cellphone. It's about to interrupt, but Kate quickly assesses that it's a text message rather than a call from someone about a dead body somewhere. It's not that immediate. It's not as urgent as dipping her head to one side, swanning some huge eyes his way and—

Her cell bleeps loud enough to make her jump. She's got the vibration on extra loud and remembers juggling the tones so that each subsequent signal gets more and more noisy in case she's sleeping very deeply. It's serving its purpose right now. Pity they're not in bed. _Not_sleeping.

'You should ... get that,' he spills, the breath from his words almost alive against her lips. She's whetted them, on autopilot, probably in response to his verbal suggestions about 'buff' and licking and dirty and clean. _Oh, yeah. Those last thoughts were hers._

'I should. But, I should also—'

_THE CELL SCREAMS THAT SHE HAS A TEXT MESSAGE._God, but Kate hates that phone. If she could jimmy it out of her pocket and smash it with her libido, she would. If she could head butt it with her horns of desire, at least she'd be getting (or giving) a well-deserved poke.

Castle nestles towards her, unhurriedly, ultra-calm. 'Answer it, Kate. We can do this ... um ... _talk?_... or other things ... later.'

Right. They need to talk, but she'd rather tease, touch, taste, tangle, tousle, and everything else that begins with the letter _t_and relates to being with him, physically.

To hell with her phone, the time is now. She really needs to come clean about it all. She really needs to come clean about knowing that he loves her. She really needs to come clean about the fact that she thinks she might love him too and that it's making her crazy, it's impacting on her every thought ...

_But the phone. The phone. The fucking LOUD phone._

She really needs to come clean. She really needs to (involuntarily) come clean.

And then he kisses her. And she really needs to come.

Vaguely, she wonders if Castle would ever be able to write an entire chapter about Rook and Heat kissing, and whether she might challenge him to do that one day while he's musing about her. And practising with her. On a bike, in the nook. Of the precinct, in his book, and his lips. So soft. And his hands starting to wander. Exactly. Oh, exactly where she needs them to be. But not there yet, he hesitates, but his mouth? Open, and his tongue, is starting to buffer her bottom lip—

THAT CELLPHONE! She wants to stuff it up Insurance Serena's cocky arse!

'Guys?'

A cough, a louder strike of the cellphone, a retraction. Of Castle's lips, of the tongue that never quite made it _there_, of a kiss hardly started. Of Castle's warmth, and her own mouth returned, and no hand in her hair. A change. Of a sex-charged atmosphere. Not quite, she still wants more, needs more, _Castle_...

'YO. GUYS? I'm sorry.'

Esposito's voice is somewhere in the haze. It's licking at the edges of her bike and cleaning her leather jacket. 'Beckett! _Detective_, um BECKETT? Kate? I'm so ... hey, yo! Listen up, guys.'

Kate thinks Esposito is probably sorry, but not half as sorry as she feels. Not half as sorry as Javier making noise about the wrath of Captain Investy Gates, how she's upstairs, frothing at the mouth, how they're late and ignoring the text messages and she looks like she's going to bury them in traffic later in the day.

'She wants us up there,' Esposito finishes, throwing Castle a 'you-go-bro' look. 'But Castle? I gotta tell ya. The steams coming outta her ears, man. Outta her _ears_.'

As Kate climbs off her bike and waits for Castle to do the same, she knows she's got steam coming out of her, too. Not from her ears, but all so very, very involuntarily.

**next week:** will Captain Subja Gates get a new nickname? Will we discover why she wants the team in for a dawn meeting? Will Castle lick Beckett's leather jacket as an oral accompaniment to his morning coffee? Will the stream-of-consciousness writing become a haiku? What are the 9 other ways to interruptus coitus? Will Kate use her gun to control her involuntary responses to Rick? All that and more, next time.


	4. Chapter 4

Gates will probably be in their space before Castle has a chance to touch Beckett again. He knows Kate wants to say something, and he wants to make verbal suggestions too, but her proximity on that motorbike had been too much to take. One of them had to make the first move before either hell froze over or Captain Miti Gates smiled, and as both of those options weren't about to happen any time soon, Castle had simply gone for it.

He'd weighed up his options. Kate could have either elbowed backwards and broken his rib, or reciprocate his touch. It was worth the risk. Castle had plenty of other ribs and only one cop preening on her machine within stroking distance. Once the leather had infiltrated his nostrils and her hair had slipped out of its helmet in front of his eyes, he'd been hard-pressed not to force the issue and demand she turn the bike around. It's a beautiful day to ride somewhere close by, get naked by a body of water, run his hands through the hair he's wanted to fist and caress if for so, so long ...

But it goes nowhere. He barely gets to mesh his lips against hers before the command of Miti Gates can no longer be ignored. He could feel Kate's response. Although the entire kiss lasted less than ten seconds, she'd moved her body close enough — postured definitely enough — to cause a ripple of thrill through his system. Technically, he'd been almost straddling him, and this alone is enough to encourage him to make another move before the day is over.

To think that it's only the second time they've locked lips! As they walk towards the lower precinct doors, Castle marvels at the physical restraint he's shown over the three years of their partnership. And Beckett's too. In his head, she's like a dormant volcano, a sleeping dragon. Castle can taste the sexual edginess, the Beckett want and need that she cups close to her breast, like the tightest of lacy bras. If she'll only allow herself that freedom of movement, the access of hands probing the catch of her underwear, then she'll break free with the bounce of—

'Everything okay, bro?'

He and Esposito are walking two paces behind Kate through the parking bays. Castle knows he's been caught checking out Beckett's leather and lower, but he's not in the mood to be embarrassed today. It is what it is. Esposito's just witness motorcycling _in flagrante delicto _and if he wants to stir the pot, tease a bit, then Castle's up to it. He's up to it, and more.

He'll admit everything.

'Great. Yeah, I'm great thanks,' he replies, arching an eyebrow and grin towards Esposito.

'Good. You're gonna need to be when you get to Gates. She's got it in for all of us this morning, and you're not her favourite.'

Castle shrugs. The movement feels fantastic as an entire dump of adrenalin and testosterone floods his body and buffers his resolve. 'Don't care. I only want one favourite in the precinct. Gates was never open to me.'

Kate gets to the door first, swings it open and lets herself through. She stops to hold it for them both and Castle, seeing another opportunity to brush against her, waves Esposito to go before him. He doesn't, electing to prop and chat.

'Aww, _Castle_. I didn't know you were making a play for me as your favourite. That's so sweet.' Esposito lowers his voice but Castle knows Beckett can hear everything being said. She's less than five feet away. 'Doesn't explain why you were sharing tongue time with Beckett on her bike.'

'Hey? Espo—'

'How do you think that makes me _feel_, bro?'

Not only does Esposito cut across Beckett's attempted putdown and ignore her death glare, he reaches up to touch Castle's cheek in an affectionate tease as he backs through the door, making it impossible for Castle to do or say anything to Beckett. As the car park door closes, they stand three abreast, watching the overhead lights tell them that the elevator is nearly there.

'For the record, Castle, I don't want romance on a motorbike,' says Javier, standing between Kate and Rick, playfully nudging the bigger man just below the ribs. 'I want dinner and dancing if I'm gonna commit to being your favourite.'

Castle squashes a grin, feeling the heat coming from Beckett over the finely-cropped skull of Esposito. He is just about to reply with witty repartee when Kate says something that makes his entire mouth cake, his legs goo, his hair stand on end.

'Maybe if you paid more attention to dinner and dancing with Dr Parish, you'd not be looking to steal my romance on a motorbike, _Esposito_. Now shut up before I ear-lock you over what's mine.'

'Um, okay. But Lanie never wanted to go dancing,' says Esposito, exchanging a look of sheer bewilderment with Castle, leaving Beckett to sigh and sink her eyes into the back of her head.

Castle watches, transfixed. Kate's eye action happens in slow motion and he has a second to wonder what it'll be like to witness that when she's slowly working her way up his body, inch by incredible inch, to a point where she sits up, basks her breasts over his chest and rolls her eyes in anticipation of—

'Let's go you guys,' she says in Beckett fashion. 'And close your goddamned mouths. Both of you.'

She gets into the elevator, leaving Castle to ponder what she's had for breakfast to make her so uncharacteristically feisty — in the best sense of the word — and how he can get his hands on some to put in her three-hourly coffee. Every day, forever.

Sharing the elevator ride with Esposito doesn't stop Castle grinning to himself or trying to maintain some form of eye contact with Kate, though she keeps her gaze pointedly downwards. He can see she's trying to suppress a smile, but when he steps half a foot backwards from Esposito, inclines his head towards her to steal some of that mirth or just check out her ass, he nearly chokes at her forwardness.

Or make that backwardness.

She mirrors his small step behind the upward-glancing Esposito and throws Castle a look so hot, he feels as though he is melting from the inside-out. The look touches his skin, it reaches his throes (of something) it reminds him about beauty and miracles and God, it makes him gasp so it's audible and attracts Esposito's immediate attention.

'Again, bro? You okay?'

He's not. It's hot in here, and when he'd said _that_to Serena Kaye about her whip, he hadn't ever been visually seduced by Kate Beckett in an elevator. Until today. And they're not even going down. Not yet. The elevator is taking him higher than he's ever ridden in his life.

'Hey,' she says, randomly, throwing him a genuine smile that almost knocks his favourite boxers away from the top of his thighs.

He grunts against this ball in his throat. 'Hey yourself.'

There's a moment of silence as he balances against the upward momentum of the elevator. The fervor is pitched to a magnitude he's never experienced before, and that knowledge makes everything about his pursuit of Beckett that slightly bit hotter. _Okay, a lot hotter,_and he'll admit to pursuing now, even though it had been all about the waiting until this very morning. After her show of cards, Castle is throwing in his hand and getting ready to play for keeps.

He's been in love, he's felt the magic, wanted to preserve it enough to marry twice with the belief that it'd all last. But this thing with Beckett? It's already had legs enough to run three years, not without major hiccups, but it's still running. It's survived constant head-butting and bickering and near-death situations that have turned everything on its ear, but it's still breathing. They're breathing the same air, except when he feels her eyes upon him in a totally different way — then, everything stops. Especially his ability to draw breath.

This morning marks their first moment of intended, consensual contact, even though it only resulted in a micro-kiss. The buzzing in his head matches the taste of sizzle on his tongue, the hint of familiarity about how her lips feel against his own. The anticipation? The three years of want, and now the look that has sent his heart rate rocketing and his baser instincts hardening?

The anticipation is killing him. It's so unique, almost like they're newlyweds in the Wild West, or a courting couple in early twentieth century Ireland. Castle knows Beckett, he _knows_ her and has admired her from afar, lusted after her since the moment they met, yet everything about her is so new. It's the first time he's waited for a person with such longing. The fact that he desires this woman more than he's ever wanted in his life is extraordinary. _And Castle feels it everywhere._

Ever since she started playing on his sexual ball field (as he likes to refer to it) in that wonky period after she'd confided on the swing set, every smile has conjured new hope, every word exchange has been interpreted differently.

She's changed. So has he, and even though their hearts have been beating for each other for a while now, it's time to synch this part of his iPad to get them on the same page. He's all about the compatibility and—

'Castle?' she secrets behind Esposito's back. The elevator is slow, Esposito is ignoring them and Castle is sure Javier is smiling

He doesn't care. Instead, he watches Beckett. _Leers _at her, and plays.

'Yes?' he whispers, wondering how long they have left on this elevator ride. It's not enough, but _oh_, it stops on two and takes on four more people. Kate and Castle shuffle back towards the opposite wall to the opened doors, but Esposito maintains his distance and the four new passengers glance upward at the numbers.

Castle watches Beckett lean against the wall and envisages pressing her into a flat surface. Anything, really. The elevator confines, her apartment wall, the clutch of his couch, the give of her bed. It'd be easy to get her off balance, everyone always thinks Kate would kick his booty in anything physical, but his mass alone would ensure hard-won success. He'd just have to protect his more sensitive parts, but if he's reading her cues this morning, it's not likely Kate will be hurting him. Unless he wants that, but he's more interested in finding every single spot there is to love—

'What are you looking at?'

He's surprised by the question, but everything about the dawn has been so bizarre this far. He feels like playing more than ever before. Castle is happy to pitch, is no longer intimidated by the batter and has his curved ball ready.

'You _know_ what I'm looking at, Beckett.'

His whisper comes out with a slight purr, a small growl. Even though he's sure that Esposito can hear them and that they're seconds away from the precinct floor and disembarking, he could stay like this forever. The leaning, the provocation, her eyes filled with everything from affection to the bang of lust. She wants him — that fact alone is enough to get him through the next thirty years of life — and he wants her more than his next ... his next ...

_Anything._

'Tell me. Tell me what you're lookin' at.'

It's been a long, long time since a woman's voice could make Richard Castle as hard as a younger man in the peak of condition. He tries to think of the last occasion, but the moment her eyes wander to his lips, lower into the collar of his shirt, Castle realizes that thinking about his past is a waste of time. She's here, he's now. It's the twang of her words as she drops her 'g' endings to some expressions that has him weak at the knees, and she does it in more intimate moments when her cop defenses are down.

'I'm looking at _you_, Kate. I've always been looking at you.'

'Oh ...'

Her voice slays him. It will probably be like filtered charcoal through muslin in his ears when she's limp in his arms. _In bed. On the floor._The idea makes him dizzy

So does her diabolical gaze, the line of her leather, the still-pulsing feel of her lips against his and that ghost of tongue—

'You guys able to drag yourselves away from your eyeballing?' asks Esposito, just before the doors to the precinct open in the longest elevator journey ever. _Castle wishes it'd had been longer._He could watch for hours and holds out for the time she's in his bed — or he's in hers — and he has moments at his disposal. He won't be sleeping. He doesn't necessarily need to be touching, although that'd be preferable, but to just lay against a pillow and drink in the sight of—

'Coming Castle?' she asks, from somewhere in the middle of those pursed lips, that teasingly pitched smirk.

'Not yet, are you?' he dares to whisper right into her hearing space, so low that it's for her ears only. Kate's quirk of an eyebrow, the slight pop to her eyes and the faint stain of blush are her tells for registering his pitch, but her recovery is nearly as arousing as her physical closeness. She tries to hit him out of the park.

'I might have, but the ride was too short.'

Castle's mouth dries, but he loosens his pitching arm to strike out. 'Maybe we'll have more success on the way down.'

_She's OUT. The batter is out_.

Once the doors open, Esposito doesn't look back, and for an instant, neither does Beckett until Castle's words register and she's half-way to her desk. She stops suddenly. Castle is that one step behind, watching the sway of her lower back with writer's eyes, and miscalculates braking distance. He collides with her and his hands go to her hips to steady them both. His chin is at her shoulder, mouth at her ear and waistband conveniently positioned at the curve of her spine he's just been admiring.

_Kismet. Fate. Message from the universe_, and they fit together with a certainty that unsettles them both.

He expresses it by remembering their moments on her motorbike. She expresses it by continuing forward momentum, shuffling to her desk and swallowing audibly.

'Castle? You need to let go,' she whispers, turning her head just enough so they're almost kissing again. Not wanting to break the trance, to move anywhere but closer to another taste of _that_, Castle tries to assess the situation by using his sixth and eighth senses. His seventh sense is tucked at the front of his pants and isn't helpful due to its compression and distention at that very time.

Ryan's not around, he thinks Esposito is in the break room, and Gates? She's nowhere to be seen. If steam is coming out of Capt. Miti Gates's ears, then maybe she's down in the subway, making like a caboose? Or a train wreck?

'There's no one here, Beckett. What were you going to say to me? Before? On your bike?'

Kate sighs, but doesn't pull away. Castle doubts she's let anyone this close to her in the middle of the precinct, deserted or not, and this stirs his blood to boiling point. The need to get into her mind is paramount. Nah, the need to get into her _pants_is as important, but he can't suggest that at work. Or can he?

'I know I distracted you before, but you were going to say ...?'

She turns her head, and in an action that has Castle to the point of tweeting _omg, Beckett is in love with me today_, she presses her nose against his, closes her eyes and grins. It's not as carnal as a kiss with teeth, tongue, tango, but God it's romantic. He wants to goo in a pint of gah, but all of a sudden everything is harder than packed ice.

She whispers ... and okay, maybe he can goo. Just a _lot._

'I've gotta say a lot of things, but I'm really distracted. Today, especially, and that kiss on the bike? I really, really want to ... I just really, really need to ... Castle, I ...'

Castle feels himself strain. She's pulling him in, making him crazy, and he expects her to react like that time she told him she likes to do kinky things with her handcuffs. A total farce. A sexy tease. A way to light him up, only to douse him—

'That kiss, Castle? Um, how about we do it again ... more? That kiss, it was ...'

_Sure, right. She's playing him now, working the tease. This is not really happening, Castle, she's not really rubbing her nose against yours in the middle of the precinct, at dawn, after kissing you on her bike and undressing you with her eyes in an elevator ..._

Beckett chooses that moment to turn and back away, around her desk. In a series of movements that seem like the sexual dance of birds of prey, he follows her until her butt is pressed into her cop-chair. He props in front of her, she stands on her toes and stares at his mouth.

'More kissing, Beckett?' he hears himself say, and to his own ears, he sounds like the caricature of a burly, testosterone-studded manwhore. Inside, he's following the lead of his heart. And his cock.

'Um, is this where you start treating me like another one of your conquests?'

She smiles and runs the tip of her tongue over the bottom of her top teeth, all the while watching. His mouth, his eyes, his neckline, and still they don't touch.

'Is that what you want, Castle?'

'You know what I want. And if you don't know, I'm happy to tell you.'

Kate reaches her fingers forward. In a dalliance of touch against the front of his jacket, she traces seam and soft material. 'I think I know. And just maybe? If you want to? We could find some time today to grab a burger,' she stands in his space, shapes to kiss him, but brushes her lips against his in a soft caress of _later_. 'Or we could find somewhere quiet ...' she repeats the lip work and he stifles the urge to plunder her mouth with his own. He waits, she talks ... 'where I could show you exactly what I wanted to say ...'

Castle tries to just delight in the trill of mouth and mayhem that her lips zing into every area of his body, but the need to kiss her back — render her senseless — is getting desperate ...

'And what I wanted to do, Castle. What I've wanted to do for—'

'_Detective_ Beckett! Oh, and _Mr_ Castle!' comes a voice from Castle's worst Halloween nightmare. He thinks it might belong to the face from 'Scream' and the personality of Freddy Krueger. He reacts, but doesn't jump away from Kate. Later, when he reflects on how Gates has found them, he realizes how intimately the picture is painted, but by then, he does not care.

The space between their lips is minimal, their eyes half-mast, the atmosphere saturated with foreplay, five-play and promise. It doesn't take a bitch Captain with a pole up her ass to understand what's going on.

'Sir,' comes Beckett's voice from a spot near his shoulder. Castle recognizes her return to cop-speak, but takes pride in the huskiness that's rimming the edges of her tone. He doesn't look at Gates — what a waste of time — but spend moments watching Kate's face with his back to the Captain. Her eyes spark mischief, her smile sings about their day so far, but it's her demeanor that gives it all away.

She remembers everything. He's sure of it, and if she never admits to that fact, he doubts he'll call her on it. As long as she reciprocates every single thing he's feeling and grins at him like this at least once a day for the rest of their—

'In my office now, Beckett!' flings the She-Ogre. 'You too, Mr Castle, although, God knows you are the cause of this entire, ridiculous ...'

Gates's mini-rant, like Castle, is lost in Beckett's eyes. He moves to allow Kate to pass, but takes her closest hand from against her thigh before she leaves, bunches it against his own and lifts the knuckles to his lips. Old fashioned, romantic, but so sexy because it earns him a grin of pure knowing.

'I'm always watching you, Beckett,' he says, returning her hand with a small bow.

She nods, turns and sashays her hips with purpose as she leads him to Gates's office.

**coming up:** What will Iron Gates have to say about Castle and Beckett's precinct nuzzle. Will she harden up on them? Penetrate their defenses? And where has Esposito gone, is he sulking about what Kate said to him re Lanie? Who is the mysterious famous person about to visit the precinct and will he/she be a shipper? Where is Ryan? Is he married yet, or has his range of vests turned Jenny into a bridezilla? All this and more, next week.


	5. Chapter 5

_Although I know where the story is headed, it continues to be all about the anticipation and screw-ballishness (not a word, but fun). The writing tends to be a little bit more chaotic than I'd usually aim for, but it's to give a certain 'panicky thoughts' and love-lust strained situation. Thanks for the nice words of encouragement. Hopefully it will continue to be fun._

_And when writing about love and lust, I always work on the knowledge that love can make us all do very crazy, OOC things ; )_

* * *

><p><strong>Anticipation is like a red carpet. Who the hell knows why?<strong>

The last time Kate showed genuine physicality in the precinct, she'd beaten Ryan in a best-of-three arm wrestle to see who would go and break the news to Gates that their lead suspect had alibied out. She's not entirely against personal displays of affection. She'd accepted a gentle kiss from Tom Demming way back in the day, flung an arm around Josh and smooched his cheek when he'd surprised her one morning after being away for weeks ...

But this thing with Castle? It's been smoldering like a semitrailer's tyre on a highway in Ventura sunshine. The rubber feels as though it's about to pop, and she's never wanted to display her personal affection so publicly before.

She might spare a moment to wonder what, in fact, has gotten into her, but that would be a waste of the energy she needs elsewhere, and the effort required to follow Gates into her office.

If she could choose what to do with this very moment, she'd recapture the pure romance of Richard Castle picking up her hand and laying a kiss on her knuckles.

Instead of mentally auditioning for the part of a brunette Cinderella, she should be following Gates, but she cannot clear her mind of this very fact – she's _never_ had the back of her hand kissed! Not by a prom date (because that had been Troy Abbs and he'd had lips like a pair of wurst sausages, so just _no_) not by her dad, not by any other guy. Maybe Maddie might have bestowed her a peck on her hand when they'd talked about her latest boyfriend being a Prince Charming, but that's it.

And the thrill of 'first time' drops into the precinct air and makes love with the memory of the motorbike kiss and the smelling-of-leather comment. She wants him so bad today, she has to tense the top of her thighs to stop them from rabbiting apart and compelling her to jump into his lap.

_But he's standing._

'After you,' she says, clamping her legs with all the strength she possesses.

Kate tries to maneuver behind Castle, to get him to wander into the office first so that she can check out the ride of his pants this morning. It's something that she does with great stealth at least once every couple of days — has done so since the moment they met — and she's pretty sure she's never been caught out. Castle must be thinking the same thing. He uses his arm to encourage her forward, palms the small of her back so she'll walk first, but all it does is inflame her coccyx and stir her non-coccyx bones.

'Ladies first,' he growls into her ear.

'Real gentlemanly of you, Castle,' says Esposito, as he zips past the couple and heads to his desk to collect a file. Ryan bustles onto the scene too, and Kate realizes the window of privacy has closed for the moment. 'You letting Beckett go first so you can check out her badge, dude?'

'No.' Kate hears Castle laugh in that low-throated, deep-chested way he has going on. 'Beckett's my human shield anytime we enter the good captain's office, guys. You both know that.'

Beckett subdues a smile. She lets them guffaw, but as Ryan and Esposito dutifully march into the next office, Kate pauses, turns back and whispers a promise of her own.

'I was letting you go first so I could check out your ... _badge_, Castle,' she says.

He doesn't miss the chance, and she's glad. The banter takes her places that her body just can't at the moment. '_Badge?_Is that what we're going to call it, Detective Beckett? Okay, well, as I like to say, the ball is now in your court.'

Suddenly, she can sense desire as though the wildest of animals has flared its nostrils to drink in the raw smell of a mate. It's rampant, and Kate can't get close enough to him. With the profile of Captain Irry Gates popping through her office door to check where they're at, Beckett doesn't have a chance to lob his ball back into court.

Shuffling, she half-nods and throws a grin straight at his mouth before turning away. Castle doesn't move his hand from the bottom of her spine, but he changes things up as they walk. Rather than letting his palm rest against her leather jacket, he flicks underneath and places flattened fingers on the skimp of her shirt.

_Yeah, god. It feels better than— _

'Did anyone ever tell you that your lower back is the perfect spot for my ...' he says into her ear, an inch away from rounding the door frame into Irry Gates's office. 'Hand?'

Despite knowing the consequences, Kate stops and uses the door frame to lean against. If the glass window wasn't there, they'd almost be sitting on Gates's knee. Fortunately, Captain Ahab has sat down and is looking at something Esposito is showing her. The risk of being caught roughens Beckett's voice, and the spike to her pulse sends waves of want to flood bits that crave attention.

'No one has told me that,' she whispers, touching the column of buttons at the front of his shirt, toying with them, fingering them, snagging them in play. 'And no one has ever kissed my hand before, so hey Castle? First time.'

His eyes watch her lips move, then wander downward to look at her fingers pull at his buttons. She wants that kiss, again, and _now_, but not against the back of her hand. She wants his tongue in her mouth, his teeth nipping her neck, his lips on her ear. The hand kissing had been romantic and all, but she needs—

'I'll have you know, Detective, that there are certain secrets about hand kissing,' he says, flicking his eyes away from her fingers at his buttons and quickly checking the status of Irry Gates's. Kate assumes the captain is still preoccupied as Castle grasps her non-button playing hand and slowly weaves it up to his mouth. 'It's designed to be subtle enough to do _anywhere_, but if utilized correctly, has the capacity to ...'

He trails off and uses his lips against the fleshy part between her thumb and forefinger, drawing the gap into his mouth, sucking it and applying his tongue to the underneath of her palm.

'Drive someone ...'

Castle whispers through the ministrations of his mouth, one eye on the captain, the other on ... on — who the hell knows _what_? — because it's all Beckett can do to keep from groaning so loudly, the wrath of Gates will be on them before she has the chance to pant into her only, very first hand-gasm.

'Drive you ... _crazy.'_

It's not critical orgasmic status, no ... or is that _oh, yes_... but it's close enough to have Kate forgetting all about toying with his buttons (he's pressing most of hers) and the fact that they are about to get sacked for unprofessional conduct (as long as she's in Castle's sack, she mightn't care too much) or buried in 'Traffic'. It doesn't help that his unoccupied hand has found its way to span beneath her diaphragm and is currently rubbing the soft under-cotton of her bra ...

And then his tongue works its magic along the ridge of her longest finger, all the way from that spot between her thumb, and slowly ... so slowly she's almost buckling at the knees to stop herself flinging a leg round his waist, her finger in his mouth and he's sucking with that gentle pressure that traps the tip of her finger against the upper cavern of his mouth.

'Stop, _Castle_,' she breathes on a guttural sigh, but she doesn't want it to end. She never wants this feeling to end, but there are things to do. Work to do, and 'just, _please_, Rick, I think that ... _oh, no_...'

'But we're not done, Kate,' he says into the haze. 'So far from done that I'm—'

'_Beckett!_' spits Esposito, somewhere near her head, which has been thrown back against the door jam. If the window, wall and architrave had not been part of the building, Kate's head would probably be on Gates's shoulder right about now, her mouth open as she confessed her desire for Rick Castle directly into the captain's ear. '_GET in here!_

Esposito's words are nothing more than a squirt into space, but their urgent tone registers in both Beckett's ear and Castle's mouth. Castle jumps back a little and Kate's body silently roars the loss of heat and lust. Her eyes lock on Esposito. It's like a slap to the face of wantonness.

Looking for something to do with her hands and face, Kate rakes fingers through her hair, straightens her leather jacket and realigns her vision. This includes an arched eyebrow in Castle's direction and a cautionary finger to her own lips to indicate _shhhh_.'

She swings around the door frame but is met with gentle resistance and a voice to the back of her hair, 'we're nowhere near done, Detective,' which flusters her almost as much as her finger in his mouth and a kiss on her motorbike.

Kate silently transmits a request that she hopes Castle will be able to read through the back of her skull. It's with great relief that she steps into Irry Gates's office and he's not directly behind her. He's given her space to be professional, to rearrange her face, her breathing, her fingers. She imagines he's gone back to their desk, pretending to find something.

_Their desk?_

Jesus, it's getting worse.

' ... So that brings me to my main concern this morning, ah perfect timing Detective Beckett, I've just been bringing Ryan and Esposito up to speed about your work on the Orion Case that they missed. But now, onto why I've dragged you all out of bed this morning. It involves, of course, our illustrious Mr Castle ...'

Gates looks around. Beckett's so surprised that she hasn't been more aware of their absence and the fact that they were finger fornicating over her right shoulder, but miracles can happen.

'I expect you and _Mr_ Castle have finished whatever business you had being in each others pockets from the time you entered my work space, Detective Beckett?'

_Nope. No miracles here._

'We were just ... um ... we were just debriefing, Sir.'

Kate hears Esposito choke back a laugh, but she holds Irry Gates's gaze, wondering if the captain will back down or mention that she knows something about the attraction that's been buzzing between them in the last few weeks. She's a cop. A freaking _captain_! If she's unaware of the undercurrent of sexual surge in her precinct, then maybe she's not half the woman her reputation makes her out to be.

'_Debriefing?_' says Gates, her face unreadable even for a super cop. 'I see.'

Or perhaps she's just ignoring it, but when Castle ambles into the office a split-second later, Beckett watches Gates's face turn from bemusement to annoyance.

'Ah, _Mr_ Castle, thank you for gracing us with you presence.'

The combination of the captain's tone and words fires Kate's protective instincts. Never before in the history of the Beckett love-lust equation has she felt the need to shield a person from the adder-like tongue of another, but then again, never in her life has Beckett experienced the irrational, all-encompassing emotion of love.

If that's what this gnawing feeling is, but she'll think about that later. Over a glass of red wine. Or a hot chocolate. In bed.

'Excuse me, Sir, but Castle is here as consultant. On his own time. He's not really gracing us—'

'Ah, yes, thank you, Detective Beckett,' says Gates, her voice like a wasp sting. 'I'm well aware of why Mr Castle is here. Just as I am _well_ aware of why he _stays_.'

Kate feels a blush rise to her face, tries to hold the intrusive glare of Gates for as long as she can manage, only to be stared down by her desire to look at Castle. He's standing at her left shoulder. As usual, his eyelashes are downcast and he is suppressing one of those quirky smiles. It's so distracting, she almost reaches out to smooth the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

'Now,' says Gates, folding her arms and placing her desk firmly between herself and her staff. 'This has nothing to do with the Orion case, but everything to do with ...'

She bends her head over a printed email, peers above her glasses like the strictest school ma'am in the land, then floors Kate with a strap to her bare legs. 'It's about Nikki Heat.'

'We're in here at dawn to discuss Nikki Heat?' whispers Esposito. Beckett feels Ryan stiffen and Castle gently shudder with restrained mirth. _Good God, but she'd like to get him alone in the interrogation room, rant at him for laughing at this stupid situation, then straddle him while sucking on his lower lip._Just how to include her fingers in this imagery scenario—?

'_It seems_ that because the NYPD set a precedent with the visitation of Natalie Rhodes last year, that we are to be _INUNDATED_ ... YES, I said _inundated _by yet another ACTOR who wants to ... what did they say in that email? Yes, here it is ... learn on the JOB.'

'Oh, no,' murmurs Castle, low enough to be a gentle caress in Kate's ear, but vivid enough to express some panic. 'I think I knew this was coming.'

'AND,' says Gates, continuing a shouty-voice to emphasize certain words, 'even though I have CONFERRED with those who must be obeyed and maintained that I was AGAINST this man coming into our working life, we are to be INUNDATED by his presence.'

Gates stops. Kate looks at her, wondering if she's ever going to see the same blend of anger, horror and disdain on her captain's face again. Gates appears close to a full-blown tantrum. Within a moment, she reigns it in and Beckett feels Castle relax against her side.

'Apparently, according to our superiors, Mr Castle, ride-alongs of this nature are very, very good for police and city public relations. The _studio_,' she sneers the word out like it's made of slime, 'making the Nikki Heat movie has a great deal of influence. So it would seem.'

Gates appears to want to plop down in her seat, exhausted, but to her credit, stays standing. 'But I've not brought you all in at dawn to punish you for this ... this ... _fiasco_, but to inform you that the visit of ...'

She pauses, once again flapping at her notes, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. 'What's the name of this ... this person who is playing your leading male character, Mr Castle?'

'Jason Bateman,' choruses the three men in the room. If Kate was on better terms with her captain, she'd lock eyes with Gates, shake her head and smile. They don't. Gates is still looking at the page.

'No. No, according to this message sent late last night, the actor playing your ... your ... James someone ...'

'Jameson Rook,' says Castle, quietly.

'Yes, the actor playing that character has changed. Most suddenly, Mr Castle. And my superiors have assured me that _one_, you knew about the change, and _two_ you approved the visitation of this new actor into our workspace ... WITHOUT CONSULTING ME.'

Castle has the sense to lower his gaze. Again, Kate is drawn to look at him, even though her focus should be on Gates and getting to the bottom of how this new tagalong will disrupt their work. But his eyelashes flutter and his mouth — those lips that had worked their magic on her knuckles, the sucking of her fingers against the moisture of—

'Ma'am ... um, Sir? I only learned about the casting change yesterday,' admits Castle, the peep of his tongue against dry lips a sign that he's feeling Gates's heat. Beckett feels some heat of her own. 'I didn't know when the visit would be so ... um ... that the new actor would be so enthusiastic to—'

'THIS MORNING, Mr Castle! He is coming very, very soon.'

Gates looks at her watch, as Esposito seeks out Castle's attention behind Beckett's back.

'Castle? Who _is_this dude? What happened to Bateman?' he mouths, but Gates is back controlling the room before Castle has the chance to whisper about the new actor playing Jameson R—

_'Norbert Pattison_. According to our intel, it's Norbert Pattinson who will feature in _Mr _Castle's movie and he is expected to arrive at—'

'_Norbert?_' says Esposito, reacting before he recalls that Irry Gates is not to be interrupted. 'Isn't that the name of the owl in Harry Potter?'

'Dragon,' corrects Castle and Ryan together.

Gates waves her hand in dismissal of this piece of trivia. 'He'll be arriving shortly without his entourage, thankfully. He wanted to bring ten people along to "cater for his needs", but I was able to put a stop to that.'

'With respect, Sir,' says Kate, finally finding her voice amid the shock of the recasting of Jameson Rook with Norbert Pattinson. 'What would you have us do with Mr Pattinson now that the Orion case is over and the day looks to be slow?'

'_That_, Detective Beckett, is your problem and not mine. I'll be along for the PR jaunt and to make the department look like it is welcoming and professional. What Mr Pattinson does to get into character will be up to you and your _PAL _to orchestrate. Provided it does NOT interfere with your work.'

'But, sir—?'

'Have I made myself clear, Detective?'

She has. Kate doesn't have time to discuss anything else until Gates shunts them all out of the office and the four of them are left to stand in the void between her door and the very quiet murder board.

'Norbert Pattinson, Castle?' says Ryan. 'When were you going to tell us. He's a bit too edgy, isn't he? To be playing Rook?'

'It's a pity it's not Robert,' says Beckett, purposefully looking at Castle to stir his pot. 'Would love Rob Pattinson shadowing us for a while, wouldn't you, _Mr _Castle?'

She playfully emphasizes the 'mister' with the tone Gates uses and it's not lost on him. His eyes dip to her lips and she's no longer in the mood to tease.

'Rob's a little young, even for you, doncha think, _Kate?_' Castle's voice is pitched so low, her baser reactions kick in and she's flooded by more than sheer interest. But it's so damned public.

'They say he's a better actor than his famous cuz, but he's not as hot,' starts Esposito, stopping abruptly when he realizes what he's said and retreating to his desk as quickly as possible.

'Lanie tell you that, bro?' asks Ryan, taking out his cell to text Jenny about Norbert Pattinson's imminent arrival. 'Jenny thinks Norbert is super hot. Hey? I wonder whether he'll ask us to call him his stage name ... you know? The Norb?'

The conversation is lost on Kate. Castle's eyes snag hers, his ardor so apparent she thinks it must be palpable to every other person within a mile of the precinct. She makes the quickest decision of her life and inclines her head towards Interrogation Room # 1.

She watches understanding dawn across his face. The look he sizzles back liquifies her legs, wriggles her heart and butterflies her stomach, so she walks away from him with the most exaggerated hip movement she can muster.

Castle doesn't give her that much of a head start. As soon as he hits the room, Kate grabs him by the lapels and laughs. 'I've got a challenge for you, Castle,' she says, her lips quivering in anticipation. Her senses have stored a memory of what he tastes like. What he _sounds _like, and she wants to do it again. And again. 'Do you think you can write an entire chapter just about a make-out session in an interrogation room? Bet ya can't!'

She moves to press her mouth against his, although part of her yearns to put her fingers up to his lips. Castle dips his head slightly in answer to her challenge.

'How much time do we have?'

He kisses her first and she wonders if he's making mental notes.

**coming up:** Is Norbert Pattinson as appealing as his cousin Rob, and is it true that he has issues with Kristen Stewart that might make him dislike Kate Beckett? Will Norbert be on Ryan's 'Free Five'? Will Beckett and Castle be able to frolick in the interrogation room without interruption? And can Castle write an entire make-out chapter? All this, and other stuff, next time .


	6. Chapter 6

**Anticipation is like a crappy episode. Once you've watched, it slinks away really fast.**

'It was just a kiss.'

Castle has said this to Kate Beckett on a couple of occasions, and he tries to remember exactly when as he follows her into the interrogation room. Might have been in relation to Serena Kaye? Yep, just a kiss, although pleasant and soft. Kyra? Just a kiss at that time, though laced with sentimentality and memory. But kissing Beckett?

So _not _just a kiss.

It's kissing musically, like a symphony in G sharp. It's kissing intoxicatingly, like drinking basket-pressed Syrah from the Rhône. It's kissing as an art form, which inspires works by the great romantics, sculptures in hardened clay, etchings with both hands pumping the parchment.

Kate obviously thinks she's going to initiate something in the interrogation room, but once the challenge is out about writing a chapter devoted to a make-out session, Castle doesn't give her the time or space to start _anything_.

It's all him. And now he's more confident about reading her signals and responding to her every touch, it's on.

He can't even stand upright let alone think about writing a chapter. The buzz round the precinct this morning is killing him. It required every inch of his resolve to avoid touching her in Gates's office, especially when he could feel her trying to catch his eye, or when her gaze fell to his mouth. And when Esposito and Ryan had started asking questions about Norbert Pattinson, Castle had wanted to give them money to go to the movies and watch Pattinson's most recent film, 'My Cousin, the Sparkling Vampire.'

Not that the movie would be playing in the city. Not that it would be playing _anywhere_, though part of Castle thinks Pattinson is a better choice for Rook than Jason Bateman. _Bigger. _

The other part of Castle can't think. It's pressing against Beckett while she backs him towards the table lying in the centre of Interrogation Room # 1. Without interrupting the kiss that started with him pulling her into an embrace, he lets himself be directed until his butt hits the table.

The table they work at, the place where they tag-team suspects, stare down criminals. Castle is propped up against it as Beckett conducts a thorough inspection of his alibi, which starts at lip service and will probably finish all the way down to an arrest.

His cardiac arrest. On the table. Upon which they work.

This notion arouses him more than it should, but when Kate groans into his mouth and he slants his thighs, drawing her fully against him, Castle understands that he's not alone in his thinking.

The room is dimly lit. They have enough privacy to make this count, although the fact that they are within a professional setting, only feet away from colleagues and (quite possibly) a reprimand if they're discovered, stops Castle from getting carried away too early.

Doesn't stop Beckett.

She stands as close as she can to his open lap and Castle commits this particular position to his Kate Beckett Cortex of Sexual Memory. With Beckett in heels and him buffeted against the table, they're at the most erotic height possible, and he feels everything. Even though the kiss is devastatingly hot and ongoing — from the way she tilts her head to extract every ounce of oral pressure, to the way she weights her tongue against his — Castle is so distracted by what the rest of her body is doing, that he kisses her back with the suggestive pulse generated by their hands, legs, hips.

When he changes it up, works in a couple of shallower kisses to the side of her mouth or a small trail of dewdrops against her cheekbone, Kate grasps his head to refocus his attention on her lips. When he deepens the kiss to push back against her leaning into him, Beckett uses her interrogation table to lever herself up a little and force her weight into him. When he draws breath and turns his attention to the gap between her leather jacket and her shirt, depositing tongue to her clavicle and teeth to her neck, he finds a spot where her knees weaken. He can't help but smile as she gasps into his ear.

He finds it again and she trembles. But that might be him.

'Castle?'

His name is choked from her lips between a fresh moan and a whimper. _Her neck?_As sensitive as he imagines her nipples will be, as the skin that dips between her thighs to the point of—

'I ... want ...'

The blood is pumping through his body like the surge of a fire hose trying to douse internal combustion. Castle moves his lips from her neck back to her mouth, forcing hers open to accept his tongue in an action that's one step away from rough, but edged with the outlet they both need. The hand that rested at her waist works to the front of her jeans, finds the hem of her shirt and dips beneath. He walks fingers up the skin of her abdomen.

'We need to go,' he whispers against her mouth as he stops the most intense kiss to watch the way she reacts to his hand flicking at the front of her bra. It's a front catch. One knock of enthusiastic fingers to the clasp will mean that Castle will have a front catch of his own.

She flushes. He feels it down to his cuticles.

_They need to get outta here. Norbert Pattinson be damned._

'We can't ... go. We can't even do ... _this_.'

The frustration of her tone doesn't match her actions. In a series of three counter moves, Kate leaves him in no mind about what her intentions are, even if they are in the middle of the precinct and expecting a visit from The Norb.

She grabs at his hand under her shirt and moves it over her breast. She bends her knee and brings it up to rest on the table just next to his hip, and she presses her palm to the front of his fly so that he has nowhere to go but to flex his cock into her touch.

'Kate? Beckett? We have to go ... home.'

His plea is snuffled by a fresh wave of kisses as she uses her unoccupied hand to scrunch at the front of his shirt and pull him closer. They're so close, they could barely fit a suspect's eyelash between them. Still, Beckett's pulling action compresses his hand inside her top and her hand tucked neatly between their lower bodies, and makes protesting about 'time and place' seem futile.

But he tries again. 'We could ... _Kate?_... we can ...'

Castle attempts to bite out options between the onslaught of Beckett tongue and teeth. She chooses that moment to flip at the top of his fly, searching for his belt, and the energy needed to form words is shunted southward. Not before he bleats out, 'We ... can't ... you know? Not here ...'

'I know we can't,' she pants. Kate presses her forehead into his and looks at his lips, her eyes half-cast like a seductress on speed. She's so hot, and Castle doesn't mean that in the basic, sexy way. She's literally burning up, so feverish that Castle formulates a plan that will get them outta here for a while. Just enough time to—

'Let's just stop. Stop kissing ... for a while ... and your hand. Um, whoa! _Kate!_'

'_Stop?_' She's breathless. Doesn't make her less incredulous. 'Stop _kissing?'_

Her hand is no longer trying to undo his pants, but she's back to resting her palm over his erection, applying rhythmic pressure correlating to their kissing. When he deepens the kiss, thrusting his tongue into the crevice between her teeth and the side of her mouth, she moves up and over her hand in a silent pledge to straddle his lap.

'Beckett? I'm going to have to ... have to ...'

Oh, dear God, but she's so ardent that Castle is having the hardest time resisting every parry. Whenever he retracts his mouth to make some sort of sound about stopping or going home, Kate hoists his lips back against her own and works her body around him like a human latex glove. She fits, they are like sheath and fingers, and he doesn't want to go anywhere but in and out.

Unfortunately, she picks the most ridiculous places to become the first human horny rubber glove of sex. What happened to the Det. Kate Beckett of 2009, who could barely _look _at him in the interrogation room without snapping? Now she's snapping at his belt buckle and looking to be his every fantasy?

'Just a couple more ...' she suggests, reassessing her idea to straddle him. One of her knees is still up near his hip but her other foot is firmly on the ground. _Speaking of firm, that hand between them is driving him to the brink_. 'Minutes ... K? Just a couple of ... couple more ... times ... just a bit. More ...'

For reasons he can't begin to list, he doesn't undo the front of her bra. Castle simply rejoices in the feeling of heat, swell and glorious lacy fabric under his hand, and congratulates himself on thinking ahead. If she's still dressed and they get interrupted at _ANY _moment, at least there won't be a mad scramble to appear professional and unaffected.

'I'm going to have to ask you ... _Beckett?_...'

She takes her fingers from the front of his pants, places two arms around his neck so her hands find the side of his head, she looks down and sears kiss after kiss into his mouth. It's pummeling and so physically involving, Castle has to keep his eyes closed to stop white-hot stars clouding his vision.

'You need to stop that ... _now_.'

'Can't ...'

She rubs her fingers along his jawline, dips a tip of her nail into his ear and plays with the outer cusp of his lobe. She makes small noises of desire that would probably kill him, but the way she's touching him will do that first.

'Kate? C'mon—'

She smiles, sleepy and seductive. Pressing her bottom lip out in the instant before she looks to kiss him again, 'Just a few more minutes ... coz ... I need ...'

Castle wants to take out a Glock, or Sig Sauer or whatever weapon is closest, and shoot himself in the foot. He's gotta stamp on the one thing he has wanted for as long as he has known her, but if they're just a little more patient, they can have all the privacy and space in the world.

For one reason or another, her patience clock has wound down. It has coincided with him being ready to wind her up too, but he cannot allow a make out session in the interrogation room to be another anti-Castle feather in Gates's hat He has a plan. It involves creative storytelling — some might call it lying — but if it gets them out of the precinct for a couple of hours and into the privacy of a hotel room, he'll be happy to do the time.

Just as long as she's allowed conjugal rights to his—

'Hey? _What now?_'

If he wasn't so intent on moving them, he'd delight in the look of disgruntled surprise on Beckett's face. He holds her arms to her sides as he might do a younger person needing to pay attention, but what he really wants to do is ruffle that hair a bit more. Her lips are razed from passion, her clothes are just the sexy side of bedraggled, and she looks like she's been one-and-done by a roll in the hay.

If this is the way she looks after a few minutes of kissing, he can't imagine how she'll be when they're tangled in sheets and he has just used his mouth to make her—

'No one can see us. Just a few more ...' she whispers against his cheek, dragging his lips back toward her mouth, seducing him with her heady mixture of dipped eyes, slanted cheekbones, lush promises of total abandonment.

'Kate! We need to get out of here,' he says, trying to evade each and every forward play of her mouth. He is as able to stop wanting her as a dog can deny himself the hardest, meatiest bone. _Or anything hard and meaty._And her hair? It's mussed around her head, weaving a quilt of intimacy and eroticism between the two of them.

She is like a leather vixen. He is a leaden vixen-wanter, and she's driving him crazy.

She looks awesome and smells even awesomer — a potent mixture of light and lust and a morning shower coated in a motorbike ride to the precinct — but he hasn't time to admire the handiwork of their foreplay. He probably looks as unkempt. It's not hard to see why.

She's pushing the issue, the 'two minutes more and then we'll stop,' the 'no one can see us and it's just kissing.' But he is about to detonate. 'Beckett? You need to stand down,' he says, mustering the most Esposito-like voice he can generate. It stops her mid-kiss even though he sounds more like a lovestruck teenager who has just realized his voice has broken while the hot girl in class is kissing him.

'Excuse me?' she says, pulling back and grinning with such glamour he almost revokes his declaration.

He steels himself. 'I _said_ that you need to stand DOWN!'

Castle uses the surprise to move her away, but by the time she dissolves into a one-shout laugh, a toss of her head and another flashy smile, he's willing to sit on the edge of that table for eternity. As long as she keeps dazzling him. As long as she keeps kissing him.

_Focus on the plan, Castle! The plan to get you out of there, the plan to move this heightened, extended case of erotic nothingness along!_

'_Stand down, Beckett?_' she purrs, lunging for the front of his shirt, attempting to pull him closer again. He stands firm and she throws a laugh between them once more. 'You going all tough cop on me, Castle? It's kinda hot. Do it again.'

Her smile and request drug him into a stupor, but he can smell escape victory as easily as leather. 'No. We're going to tell Gates that you feel unwell, that you're feverish. I can take you home, we can steal away—'

'Feverish? Is that what you call it?'

She lifts a questioning eyebrow. It coincides with her fingers on his top button, her hand on his shoulder, the weight of her body pressing forward. He gulps. It's audible enough to make his Adam's apple bobble in time with his quivering mind. 'Your skin is hot enough. She'll think you're sick.'

'And what about Norbert Pattinson's visit,' she asks, angling her lips upwards again. She smooches the side of his mouth and weaves a pattern of tiny kisses against his jawline. This is getting way too one-sided, his inner voice reminds him. It's time to alarm _her _impatience clock and make her as jelly-like for him as she's currently trying to do.

'The Norb can go to hell,' he says, taking her arm, moving her towards the door of the interrogation room. 'We can deal with him later. When you're feeling less ... less ...'

'Horny?'

His jaw drops as his heart lifts and his cock hardens. It's a trilogy of joyful responses. The fact that Beckett can utter one word and his entire body ripples with need is enough to propel him forward, to get them going.

'I was going to say less _feverish_, but horny will work,' he says, as she barrels him up against the back of the interrogation room door. 'What's gotten into you today, Beck—'

She kisses him one final, lingering, tingling, tantalizing time. There's no way he could have prepared for this one, it's like she's sent in her softening team with a ten minute overture before, but now she's sizzling him with her full arsenal. There is not a lot of finesse, but Castle has never been kissed like this. It's spiked with everything from unuttered profanity through to the desperate sonnets of the aroused, and as she pulls out of it, Castle is pleased to see that he's not the only one panting.

He hears himself blurting stuff in case he dies. 'Do you wonder how it's going to be, Kate? When we get out of here? When we ...?'

The words whoosh out on a breathy exhalation. She's reaching around him for the door handle and she's as dazed as him. She looks ... sick. _Feverish_. 'Yeah. Been thinkin' about it all morning.'

'Why today?' He doesn't want to ask, but it slips out as he helps her straighten her jacket and she runs a hand through her hair. 'That earlier stuff about Rob Pattinson, maybe? Or Norbert? He's pretty hot.'

That smile. Again. 'Well, neither of them are Victor Webster, but yeah, they're both pretty sexy.'

Castle knows she's teasing, but a large, _large_ part of him would love her to mention something about him. His ego? Yeah, that part.

'But they're not the reason I'm so ... so ... um ... _what are we telling Gates?_ So ...'

'Horny?' he offers.

'_Feverish, _she counters, pulling on the door handle. 'That all has to do with this dream I had about someone I work with. A dream last night. Left me pretty worked up ...'

She's whispering in his ear, starting to walk past him, leaving him in a pile of open, slack-jawed anticipation until he pulls her back and meets her challenge.

'You dreamt about Gates?'

Kate laughs, but the beautiful melody of her mirth is cut off at the knees as the vision of Castle's nightmare walks towards them.

'Detective Beckett? _Mr_ Castle. Just the people I seek. I've been caught up with a call from publicity people, ensuring that everything is set for the imminent arrival. Wanted to make sure ...' she casts a long, lingering look over both of them. Castle shivers, but that's to do with Beckett pressing her hand on his hip beneath his jacket, despite her captain's attention. 'That both of you are ready.'

_Oh, Castle's ready, alright._

He clears his throat. 'Sir? Detective Beckett is feeling unwell. Very hot and ...'

He feels Kate swallow a smirk and does his best to solider on in the trenches. '_Feverish._As usual, she's come in today ignoring the warning signs of illness and I think she needs to go—'

'Oh? You're a writer _and_ a doctor, _Mr_ Castle?' says Gates, her lip curling in a cross between 80s rocker Billy Idol and a vicious dog. 'And what do you think would be best for Detective Beckett? A cold compress and a lie down? Or some aromatherapy and a foot massage?'

Castle was thinking more along the lines of his hands in her pants and his tongue down her throat, but he keeps that to himself. 'I'm trying to be her advocate because she doesn't flinch and—'

'_SHE _being Detective Beckett? And yes, she can speak for herself.'

Castle feels Beckett stiffen beside him. 'Of course I speak for myself! But Sir, I'm not feeling the best, and if I could be excused for a couple of hours, I'm sure that—'

'Fine, fine, but _Mr_ Castle can stay here and help me meet and greet Norbert Pattinson ...'

Just as Castle is about to use his vivid imagination and conjure a disease for himself from the depth of his Derrick Storm novels, the elevator doors spring open to a fanfare of Hollywood bustle. Norbert Pattinson waltzes into life at the precinct, and even though he was asked not to bring an entourage, he is surrounded by such glamor that the cops almost have to shield their eyes.

Five minutes ago, Castle was feeling a million dollars. Now The Norb is in the room, his stock has lowered and all eyes are on the actor. And Norbert Pattinson _looks_ a million dollars. Castle hopes that Beckett will still only be feverish for him.

* * *

><p><strong>coming up:<strong> Learn how Norbert Pattinson had cosmetic surgery done and now looks like Michael Trucco. Discover how Beckett plans to get Castle alone and seduce him further. Watch out for Gates to interrupt the couple in a passionate clinch. Be aware of the sexual tension, which will ooooooze out of every pore and eventually cause this fic to implode. All this and more, next time


	7. Chapter 7

_Just a quick note to thank those who have taken the time to leave feedback. Sorry I haven't responded individually this week, it's been one of those crazy times, but EVERY comment is read and treasured. Thank you ; ) Please remember the adult rating on this one. It's not highly romantic (yet) but there is a plethora of beautifully written romantic Castle fanfic out there. This one is more gratuitous, I guess *g*._

_Happy 4:09 week.  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Anticipation is like a blindfold. One peep and it's gone.<strong>

Kate's eyes glaze over. She can taste Castle all the way along her tongue, can still feel the imprint of heat on her palm where it had rested against the front of his pants, can smell the touch of cologne on his collar ... maybe she is sick. _Feverish_, but she feels a hell of a lot more normal when she stands beside her colleagues and listens to their conversations about Norbert Pattinson.

'He's cut his hair,' says Ryan, on a sigh. 'Wait 'til I tell Jenny about it. Oh, whoa, Beckett. Hey? Doesn't he looks like ... like—?'

'I told the entourage to stay behind,' says Gates, grimacing at her team, then turning on her game face as she confronts the incoming movie crew. 'How are we supposed to do police work with Entertainment Tonight here?'

She hisses that final comment and moves forward.

'He's way taller than I imagined him to be,' Esposito says, as he looks Beckett up and down with a smirk on his face that has Kate immediately questioning. 'He's a bit hotter than RPatz, doncha think? Older? More mature ... but, yeah, his hair has changed, and dude! He reminds me a bit of— hey, whoa, he looks exactly like—'

'He looks like Demming,' says Castle, at the exact moment Kate sees the resemblance.

She suppresses a gasp. The similarity is uncanny. Norbert Pattinson is so different to his publicity pictures, the B-grade fodder that hits the net whenever he's out on the town talking about his cousin Robert or escorting a new bimbo to a premiere. He's not only hot, he's familiar. But Pattinson is as exciting to Beckett as yesterday's news.

She'd liked Tom, had found him attractive, but a Hollywood-based lookalike isn't going to do it for her today. Or ever.

So many things happen simultaneously she's forced to make quick choices — to follow her fever and leave the precinct for a couple of hours without Castle, or to make the fastest recovery ever. To hold her hands behind her back to stop herself touching him, or to wring them in front of her body in an attempt to subdue the sexual energy coursing through her.

To ignore the celebrity in front of her and simply stare at the profile of the man she wants, or to follow the earlier orders of her captain and assist with Norbert Pattinson's preparation.

She wants to stay with Castle. She could walk out of here, trust him to find a way to leave, but Norbert is in front of them before she can think her decision through.

Kate takes a moment to imagine him with Natalie Rhodes, the celluloid Rook and Heat. Pattinson's height is advantageous. He'll look good with Natalie, but that's where her level of interest ends. She's not Heat or Rhodes and she has no desire to spend extended leisure hours with Rook or Pattinson, whereas she could spend all of her downtime in the foreseeable future with Castle.

With huge emphasis on down. Time.

'Yello, peeps,' Norbert says, extending his hand, while flapping his other to slap two of his entourage on their butts as they wander past to see 'that there's no paparazzi on the premises.' Kate watches Gates follow them around, demanding that they stay put until she debriefs everyone on 'where they should be.'

'Sooo nice to meet the talent,' says Norbert, casting his eyes over the entire team. 'S'up today? When do we get to go on the police cars and swizzle the scenes? And I get to carry a piece, roight? A semi-auto. The stoodio says I can, yeah?'

Kate tries to get as close to Norbert as possible, if only to check his pupil dilation. She detects the faint traces of a British accent, but the vacant stare and speech pattern has Beckett wondering. This, and the fact that Castle is looking directly at her while Norbert looks at him.

Castle's gaze licks hotly at her cheeks. He has moved so that he's facing her instead of by her side. She, Ryan and Esposito square off opposite Norbert, with Castle creating a semicircle so that he looms large within her periphery.

She can't help but look back at him. Smiling, she arches an eyebrow his way while Norbert mutters 'somepin' about Esposito's polo shirt 'rooly showing off his cannons', but rather than receiving a smoldering look from Castle, he frowns and purses his lips.

_What now?_ seems to be the recurring theme of the morning. She doesn't think it's a good idea to drag him back to the interrogation room table or down to her bike, but that doesn't stop her imagining doing just that. As though he's reading her thoughts, Castle tilts his head as if to suggest she try.

Beckett throws him her wide-eyed, pointed look and tries to mouth her question so that Norbert doesn't notice. To her relief, the actor seems more interested in chatting to Esposito and Ryan than he does to Kate. She hopes that this continues. The last thing she needs is a Natalie Rhodes-type of situation, where Norbert will come on to her in the elevator and need to sleep with her to get into character for Rook.

Especially seeing as he looks so much like Demming. Lovely guy, Tom, a real sweetie ...

Oh, okay, the penny drops and hits home.

Beckett roots around in her head for strategies that she'd use to annoy the hell out of Castle and increase the jealousy stakes between them, but there's zero interest. Maybe it's due to her heart claiming space in her brain and her sex drive setting up camp in her old gaming centre. All her buttons seem to have Castle's name on them, except her 'EJECT' one. That particular button is pushing away any previous fire she had for games of envy and waiting.

Kate doesn't have a PAUSE button on her gaming console either. It must have morphed into fast forward.

She shakes her head in Castle's direction and frowns. He replies by shrugging his shoulders and mouthing '_Dem. Ming_' at her, as though by reminding Kate that this actor looks like her ex-boyfriend, she'll immediately want something more.

From the actor. Not from Castle, but if Castle continues to pout like he is now, Beckett may just have to step across the gathering and lip-swipe the sulky look off that mouth. _That damn mouth should be working on other things, like stamina exercises for the particular events she has in mind—_

'_Dem. Ming_.'

It's whispered this time and ten times more annoying than when he'd mouthed it.

Kate supposes she could feel offended, but she's too busy focusing on her end game. She's no time for jealousy or activities that don't involve nudity, mutual satisfaction and more of that hand kissing. Any sort of kissing, she thinks, as the session in Interrogation Room #1 floods her memory.

_He had asked her if she thought about what it would be like when they take it further. She had almost laughed out loud at the idea that she hadn't thought about it. She can barely think of anything else._

'What?' she secrets his way.

'_Dem-ming _damn it,' he mimes, and then has to put his hand over his own mouth to stop Ryan reading his lips. Rather than worrying about Demming, Castle should be thinking about what they've just been doing with each other's lips before this ridiculous interruption.

She exhales through her nose. Just as Kate is about to mouth the words 'not interested', Esposito turns to her and mutters something about Norbert being way too obsessed with carrying a piece. Castle leans forward to try and discern what she is miming at him, Gates joins the circle and Esposito asks Kate if anything is wrong.

'Why would there be?' she snaps, having to stifle her 'not interested' with a yawn to deflect the attention of Gates and the boys. Castle continues to look confused. Beckett continues to be exasperated.

'Sorry to interrupt your sleep, Detective Beckett,' says Gates, looking more agitated than usual. 'Something has come up with the requirements for Mr Pattinson's stay—'

'So, Chug-a-lug?' says Norbert in Castle's direction. He seems to have as much regard for Gates's precinct authority as he does for his assistants. 'When do you and me go down the range? Shoot us some machine guns?' He moves closer to Castle, invading his personal space. 'Wouldnya find that story arc hot? I mean, give Rook something to shoot, something that's semi-auto and so ... so ... _phallic_?'

Beckett stunts a smile. Norbert Pattinson is calling Rick Castle 'chug-a-lug'? He wants to use semi-automatic weaponry and has Iron Gates looking like she's about to combust. This day just keeps getting better. If only she could get her some quiet time.

'Um,' says Castle, while Beckett watches his mind ticking over. In his jeans. 'There's no reason for Rook to use a semi-automatic ... and hey, I'm Richard Castle, by the way, the author of the—'

'Oh, my gott. I knowed who you are, baby blue eyes.' Norbert takes Castle's hand and draws him into a man-hug. The actor slaps Castle so hard on the back, it works to dislodge the rest of his introduction, but Rick's words are lost in Norbert's enthusiasm. 'Chug-a-lug? Would not be here if weren't for ya. Cannot wait to retail you with ideas for Rook and his stash of machine—'

'That'd be _regale_, Pattinson. Not _retail_,' says Castle. Kate watches him shuffle out of the hug and try to loosen hands with the actor. When Norbert doesn't let go, Castle covers his uncertainty with more words. 'And, yeah. Rook is not the main gun guy, so I'm not sure we'd ever do anything with semi automatics. Or even be allowed, though it might be kinda cool.'

Gates steps forward to prise Norbert's hand away from Castle. 'We haven't met, Mr Pattinson,' she says. 'But I've had word about your request from the studio. Yes, it seems that even though your character ... um, Mr Rook? Even though he doesn't use any sort of semi-automatic weaponry, we have been asked to escort you to Rodman's Neck for, um ...'

Kate watches Gates choke on her words. Surely she's not going to allow ...

'For some training in the use of weaponry.'

Gates pauses. Beckett tries to meet her eyes, but they're glued to a spot over the top of Norbert's bobbly head which is almost shaking off due to the excitement of the news. Kate wonders what the studio has on Captain Gates. How they're getting her to make these decrees, why she's allowing Norbert to go into the NYPD tactical field near The Bronx and use dangerous—

'It seems that the studio will be making a very generous contribution to the precinct's refurbishment fund _and_ will list the 12th on the credits for the movie during this time of mutually-beneficial relationships between Norbert and our team,' finishes Gates, turning her eyes upon Beckett. 'Therefore, Detective Beckett and _Mr _Castle, you will be taking Mr Pattinson to our outdoor range and ensuring his needs are met.'

Beckett wonders if Norbert might be one of those actors that can get lost in the bar of a city hotel, sucking on his favourite poison and giving her and Castle an hour alone upstairs. When Gates suggests Ryan and Esposito would be better off staying in the precinct in case of a call, Beckett lets her hopes escalate, but when Norbert tells them that his assistants will be motoring along too, she grits her teeth.

Gravy and Train, two of Norbert's 'boys wot help me', swan around and clap in time with the actor's pronouncement that they're 'gonna get 'em some machine gun fellatio. Not being rude or anyfing, Missus,' he says into Gates's face, 'but I knowed this guy who had a rock band named that. And it's all about the sexy wif semi-automatics, innit?'

Beckett steps away from the group and tugs at Castle's sleeve so he will slip behind without being noticed. Gates is in the middle of balancing diplomacy with Norbert distaste, while the actor is busy invading Esposito's personal space. He seems particularly taken 'wif how this boy's muscles bulge from inside his shirt, roight.'

Kate hears Esposito tell Norbert that though he works out regularly, 'bro', he was rejected by a modelling agency for being a type that was too common.

Beckett snorts. She nods for Castle to follow her into the break room, and without looking back to see if Gates has noticed, she beelines for coffee and alone time with Richard—

'_Chug-a-lug?_ That two-bit actor called me Chug-a-lug and is out there admiring Esposito's biceps?' says Castle, reaching for the coffee machine, but stops when Beckett puts her hand on his arm. They don't have time. For _anything_.

'And can you believe it?' he continues, using her hand on his arm to draw her closer, murmuring his words over her palm as he brings it to his lips. 'He's the spitting image of Demming.'

Castle kisses her hand and uses his free fingers to creep inside the opening of her leather jacket. He brushes his thumb over her belt and curves his grip round the back of her jeans to rest on her lower back. She leans towards him, moving their hands out of the way of his mouth, fakes to kiss him fully, but teases with words to the side of his lips.

'He's a jackass. Hot enough, okay, but as interesting as a blank page in a crime novel.'

He snakes the hand that was resting low on her spine across the outer edge of her abdomen and uses a two-fist grip on the opening of her leather jacket to jerk her fully against him. The rush turns her on more than she'd like to admit. She moves in to kiss him properly, but he plays the fake and turn as easily as she'd done to him before. 'As interesting as that? And what do you like in _your _crime novels, Detective?

'I think you know.'

She closes the space and he can't evade her lips for long. She kisses him without prelude, her mouth opens just enough for the smack of teeth to collide with his tongue and for her desperation to be obvious. She reads him like 'Heat Wave'. He's as blatant and addicted as she feels, and the pages are turning faster than a good read paperback on a hot summer night. They're spiraling, just like they were in the interrogation room. She's pressing him back into the counter that houses the coffee machine, slipping tiny noises of desire in with her tongue, and he's reciprocating. In kind. But that's where it ends. He's not popping her buttons or running his hands through her hair or touching her _anywhere_ she's so wants to be stroked. Cupped. Or licked.

'Now. More.'

'No. Stop.'

_'Castle?'_

He pushes her away with a groan. He rights his shirt, fusses with his hair and looks into her eyes. 'Again, Beckett, we _have _to get out of here. I can't do this ...' he moves his hands up and down, flicking at the bottom of her shirt so it rides up above her belt. The air creates a wave of goosebumps against her flesh. Her flesh needs air. Her goosebumps pimple downwards, beneath her denim, creating a shiver and shudder into her—

'Let's get the Demming Doll to Rodman's Neck, let him shoot himself blank — not that he needs a gun for that,' says Castle, his sarcasm and air of urgency making Beckett smile shakily. 'We can find someway to get privacy. He won't need too much supervision, surely?'

Beckett realigns her jacket on her shoulders and runs her hand through her mane. It's a futile gesture. She's so bedraggled, she might as well have been in bed and been raggled. Pity she hasn't been, but there's no use standing around and wishing an orgasm to visit her in the precinct. It's time to get out in nature and become a hunter gatherer — venture forth, seek out, experience, repeat.

'There's nothing much out there, Castle,' she says, thinking of the shooting range and the limited amount of available privacy. She moves towards the door with a grin. 'Not unless you're a rabbit. And even then ...' She turns at and whispers directly into his ear _just _as Gates calls her to attention. 'You might end up as target practise rather than doing the thing rabbits do so very well.'

He smiles. 'Like fluffy tail burrowing, Beckett? Like trying to find fleshy, fat, firm carrots?'

'There's that. But there are not many spots for _humans _to make like rabbits. Just saying.'

'We're taking a squad car, right? Even though I wish we could take your bike to the place where the rabbits ... _tunnel._'

'Yeah, the squad car. But we'll have three extra passengers.'

Castle lets her through the door in front of him and spans his hand against her curve of her butt. She wants to stop, but he nudges her gently forward. 'We'll give them the slip. When the moment is right, Rabbit, I'll whisper the codeword so you'll know to run and burrow.'

Trying to extract every last inch of warmth from the palm of his hand, she presses back and stifles a chuckle. 'And the codeword is?"

'Warren.'

* * *

><p>Warren keeps her waiting for ten minutes in the squad car with Norbert, Gravy and Train, so by the time he appears in the passenger's seat, Beckett doesn't know whether she wants to jump in his lap or smack his face. She's beyond horny and dissatisfied. She's irritable.<p>

'I'm sorry,' he whispers, ignoring the cheers from the backseat and withdrawing three black hoods and a couple of iPhones. 'But trust me. I have a bandaid for you, Detective Beckett.'

She spins the wheels and they leave the precinct in flurry of huffs and rolled eyes. Beckett doesn't ask what he's been planning, but if it has anything to do with relieving the droll conversation from the peanut gallery and her internal pressure, Castle will be back in her lust books quicker than a Norbert Pattinson slip of the tongue.

Speaking of which.

'Do you trust me?' he secrets. They're pulling out of precinct parking and all she can do is nod despite the myriad of answers to that question. 'Then take every turn I say without question. I'm about to spin a story. You're about to encounter a lot of traffic congestion, but ... let's just say, it's all part of the Rabbit Plan to relieve _your_ congestion. Oh, and have you hopping.'

Kate internalizes her _what now?_ question for the hour. She listens to Castle tell Norbert, Gravy and Train what they must do 'en route to the machine gun district'. How they must 'cover their heads in order to uphold national security,' how they are 'a special trio to be allowed _near _the Rodman's Neck, as civilians.'

Beckett drives, watching the story-weaver work his magic from the front seat, enticing the boys into blindfolds and iPhone apps that track noisy police scanners in the district. Within three blocks, Castle has blinded and deafened their passengers with warnings that they must 'never stop listening to the covert information, nor look from beneath the blackness until I tap your legs thrice'. He has also turned Kate into the most ridiculous route to the shooting range, but by the time they're three miles from the precinct, they're gridlocked in traffic.

'Just relax,' Castle says, placing a finger to her lips so she'll keep very quiet, while running the fingers of his right hand up the inner seam of her jeans. 'We'll be here for a least five minutes — in this very spot, anyway — and I'll keep my eyes on the road, and our friends in the back.'

'Castle, I ...'

'Trust me. I have a traffic app that's very accurate and I have a cure for the road doldrums that will provide relief from the, um, stoppage.'

She shivers, tempted to bat his hand away and tell him she's happy to wait, but the entire atmosphere reeks of sexy wrongness. And inappropriateness while escorting himbo Hollywood people. And fantastic hotness, peppered with the chance of raunchy 'being discovered'. Topped with dexterous fingers that are—

_God. Oh._

'Traffic reports indicate,' he whispers directly into her ear, swapping words for the curl of his tongue until she's craning for more. 'That we will get there. Eventually. It might be slow on the approach ...'

He places the strongest parts of his fingers on the spot where her denim seams intersect, and _fuck_, they sit over the very spot that is silently moaning against the need for bare skin. She buckles under the exquisite pressure while he works the best graze of her life.

'But it'll pick up. The pace, and it will be better past the pointed spike of the slippery, wet ... road.'

Castle's fingers dance. Beckett's head spins, and she leans forward against the steering wheel as he uses the friction of the denim against her. She thinks she should probably check on Shamp, Larry and Moe in the back seat (or is that Edward, Bella and Jacob? Who the fuck cares?) but Castle is whispering things about it all being fine, the traffic being halted, and the backseat being entertained.

'Around the circular ... _dip_... in the road, that's where things will really start to fire up,' he suggests, rotating his fingers, using their tips to press denim into lace into the cauldron between her legs. Beckett bites against her balled-up fingers, so close to splitting an atom in the driver's seat, that she's afraid of radiation leakage. It's similar. Heat and wet and shaking with a force that's set to detonate a—

'Cass!' she mutters, unable to finish. His name, either.

'We're nearly at the end of this journey,' she hears him smile. 'One more go around the sexual speedway, getting off at the on-ramp and speeding into a few holes in the road, at just this speed, this rhythm... _ah, there we goooooo_...'

Kate feels her mouth gape and clamp over the steering wheel. Her legs fall further open to try and get more of what he's offering. Her upper body throbs in time with Castle's final words, her breath catches in the back of her throat, the beads of sweat between her cleavage and along her upper lip scream reminders of _damp_ and _moist_ and _lush_.

She recovers quickly and steals a carnal kiss with the promise of what's yet to come, wishing she could drive them home or return the favour with the skills she owns and wants to share. He smiles so contentedly, Kate's heart belts into first gear in line with the sudden movement of traffic.

'Five minutes?' She may have set some sort of personal record.

Castle sighs. 'Rabbits are always quick to come. When called.' He winks at her and she extends her non-driving hand to rest in his lap. She feels him puff his chest out and her heart amps up the cadence that only he can create.

'You know? That was—'

'Oy, Chug-a-lug?' says a voice from the back. 'Are we there yet?'

_Oh yes_, Beckett thinks to herself. _Yes, I really am._

**Coming Up:** Will Norbert place the wrong end of the semi-automatic weapon into his mouth? Will Beckett seek revenge on Castle's driving antics? Will Gravy and Train reveal the origins of their names? Will Castle blow a gasket on the return journey and have to be picked up on Beckett's bike, ready to ride side-saddle? Will the rabbits find their warren and burrow around? All this and more, in the next Roger Rabbit chapter of Coptus Interruptus.


	8. Chapter 8

_internet problems and life have prevented me from posting the next chapter sooner. Thanks for the read and hope the 1st of December finds everyone well._

* * *

><p>It doesn't surprise Kate that Norbert and his ridiculously named assistants stay blindfolded and tuned to their police scanners for the rest of the ride to Rodman's Neck. Not that she cares. She barely hears Norbert's questions about ETA and what type of semi-automatic weapon he'll be able to use. She's flying.<p>

Somewhere between her first gasp and biting the steering wheel in case she cried out in pleasure, Beckett realizes that she can't go back. It's too late to stop whatever is going on with her and Castle. Sometime after coming from the sheer friction of his fingers over her denim, she realizes that The Day They Met had been too late to stop whatever it is that's going on with her and Castle. Some moment between the end of an orgasm and the first movement of rush hour traffic, Kate understands the extent of her want.

His touch had been enough for all of a minute, but now she's tasted the hint of cherry flesh, she wants to pop that pip.

If Kate was committed to consummating their relationship before she shuddered inside her denim, then she's insane-asylum committed to having him now. Getting him to have _her_. She has a hole in her heart that needs filling, and a hollow inside her jeans that requires care, attention and him.

She thinks she can hold out until tonight. _Yeah?_

Nah!

The traffic moves just as she's reaching for his belt. She manages a groan of frustration that seems to match his, and snatches a quick, desperate kiss before she steps on the gas to push them forward an inch. Funny how a traffic metaphor can be used to describe their sexual relationship. Perhaps it's all finally headed in the right direction, albeit sooooo slowly.

It has her thinking about inches when she should be focusing on the road.

'Um, Castle?' she whispers, her gaze on him for a second. He's riding shotgun with a grin on his face that she wants to lick off with a kiss, and he's stroking his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. She's never wanted anyone with such urgency before, and it strikes her as strange that she could feel like this today, while yesterday they were coasting along as 'almost-there', but in a holding pattern.

It's a whole lot to do with that simple taste. The cherry, remember? She's had some. She wants it all, and she doesn't care if the pip cracks her teeth.

'Yes, Beckett,' he replies, sliding his hand over and placing it between her neck and the headrest. He starts massaging the area at the base of her skull, where all the tension is stored — professional, personal, familial, sexual, historical ... um, did she mention _sexual_? That needs massaging too, thanks.

Suppressing the urge to moan for 'oh, my God, MORE,' Kate internalizes most thoughts but can't stop the simple 'coo' falling from parted lips.

'When we ...' she starts, biting back nonsensical words that threaten to ping the air. She sighs and tries to regain fleeting control. _What control? She hasn't had any since the dream this morning and the phone conversation that had her thinking about semen._

She attempts to reboot. 'When we get to ...,' but his fingers strip the outer flank of the muscle that sits to the side of her neck, and _dear, but, dearie, oh_, he's squeezing so damn well, she's molten to her core. Not just figuratively. 'When we get t-t-to the ... there. Oh, _there._ There!'

His fingers type Sans Sexual font and the text is entirely inappropriate. Um, someone should put a stop to this. _She_ should put a stop to this.

'Castle ...?'

_Yeah, she's said that before,_but he's dipped his fingers beneath the back of her leather jacket, pushed down the collar of her shirt and found the broad band of muscle at her left shoulder. It's hard. And so is her muscle, goddamn it, but he's pinching it and the pain makes her gasp in pleasure.

Kate is driving erratically. She's a cop, a legally-bound-to-be-sensible driver, but how do you flick away the hand that's feeding fun with every frisk? Has she mentioned to her own mind how much she wants him?

'Beckett?' he breathes on a sigh, inching — _God, that measurement again_— a little closer across the centre console. His fingers strum against her skin, kneading and drawing the ooze from her with the most sensual of routines. By their own accord, her knees fall apart, one alongside her driver's door, the other nudging the middle section of the front seat.

'Can't concentrate. Let's stop,' she says, taking a corner way too slowly, then indicating a turn about ten minutes before the next intersection. Someone pipes up from the back, asking about semi-autos and machine gun fun, but at this stage of the day, Beckett wouldn't care if Norbert Pattinson grew fangs and turned into a vampiric version of Stephanie Meyer. Just as long as he leaves her alone to enjoy her particular neck rub.

She's not adverse to biting _just_ where Castle is pressing, but that's way too much information to share on the way to a firing range.

'Youare ... sogoodat ... this,' she hears herself gargle. The previous sentiment about stopping and concentrating is negated with each puff of air she sings at him. 'But ... you know ... driving ... and ... and ... _oh_... please ...'

Castle switches the cadence of the massage to S-L-O-W. He presses his nose into the side of her face, kisses her gently, moves her hair behind her ear and deposits tiny suctions to sensitive skin. She's gonna drive off the road soon, if he doesn't ...

_Stop. _He stops. It's as dramatic as that.

'Sorry, Beckett,' he steers into her ear with a dab of tongue. 'It's hard. It's very hard for me to keep my hands off you. Especially after what happened before. I didn't realize how very, very responsive you'd be. It's making it hard.'

He kisses the side of her mouth and her eyes cross. He returns his lips to her ear and she swears she's gonna blow a gasket before the car moves another inch. He speaks, deep and husky, and Beckett wants more than either of them can give at that moment.

_She can wait until tonight_, says some mantra of bullshit in her brain.

'Touching you might become an addiction, Beckett. Just wording you up in case you're wondering why I no longer use my fingers ... _for writing_.'

'Yeah?' she warbles. Perhaps if she adopts the Beckett banter, Kate'll be able to focus less on his touch and more on the job at hand. Norbert Whatsisface. Machine gun play. Driving 'So you won't be writing a book called "Touching Heat, then?"'

It's out of her mouth before she can stop the idea and Beckett doesn't have to look at Castle to know that he's like a kid at Christmas. A very adult Christmas, sure, but with that same crazy enthusiasm. Pity she didn't put her brain into gear before she suggested the title of this new book she's had brimming in her plot-brain since she realized her Castle attraction.

'Why, Beckett?' he smirks with his tone, scorching her with eyes that flash over her entire body. 'What an inspirational title. But wait! "Touching Heat" won't be a standalone book! It'll be part of an international Heat and Rook trilogy, I'm thinking.'

'Um, yeah?' she says, playing for time as she negotiates a difficult section of traffic.

Castle is in her ear before she has a chance to warn him that she needs to concentrate on the sudden lane change and build-up of—

'Book One will be called "Denim Heat". Its sequel will be "Laced Heat", and then Rook will work his way inward, penetrate the layers that tie up Nikki's heart in the final installment: "Touching Heat!"'

The lights change just as Kate anticipates she'll have time to go through them. She slams on the brakes rather than risk running a red light while being aurally aroused by Castle. She hears Norbert complain to Gravy and Train about the time it's taking to 'get to the guns' and 'wot's wif the driving, boys?' When Castle replies that they're only ten minutes away and they should focus prior to working the weaponry, Norbert tells his blokes to 'shat it!'

Beckett steps on the gas. So does Castle.

'I will have to do a _lot _of research for this trilogy, mind you.'

If Kate turns her head, her eyes will lock on his the second before their lips collide. His whisperings in her ear are as intoxicating as any kiss, as unnerving as any jeans-against-lace display. She's hotter for his mischief than nearly anything else, although the skill he has with his fingers (and the semi-errectomatic he houses between his legs) have her wired beyond belief.

She speeds the car up in accordance with the traffic and in time with the throbbing of her body.

'Just let me know if I can provide more tactile services en route, Detective Beckett,' he secrets way down low. 'I know you're wanting more.'

'You _know?_' Kate asks, annoyed that she sounds shaky when he sounds so certain. Once she gets the chance, she's gonna work the tease so it twists _him _in knots ... _hmm,_ maybe she should switch seats ten minutes out and let him drive for a while.

'I do know, I just wish we could find some time to ... you know, I have all these ideas pulsing through my ... my ... and I wish we could ...'

He chooses that moment to flip at the opening of her leather jacket, letting the grunt of his hand brush against her breast. He uses fingers to play with the outskirts of leather. The movement creates heat inside her shirt and ghosts sensation over her nipple, taking her back to their time in the interrogation room. It seems like years ago. She misses that oral intensity.

They haven't kissed properly since then. She's not counting the quick, heated exchange inside the car after she left teeth marks on the steering wheel. It lacked the finesse of the earlier session and she wants extended time just to work on those aspects of their relationship.

_She can totally wait for tonight, and they do have a relationship_. Beckett wishes that mantra would shut the fuck up.

'I wish we could get out of this car right now, Beckett, right here. I'd drag you out of your seat and then I wish I could get ...'

_She's an idiot for encouraging this, allowing this to happen in a professional setting, but it's more fun than she's had in ages. And isn't much of the thrill in the foreplay? She's so not waiting for tonight._

'What? You wish for ... what?' she breathes, estimating that they must be five minutes out from the range. She wonders how close Castle is to firing off.

'Oh, there's lots of wishes beneath my Beckett Christmas tree,' he growls, fingers popping her second button and spearing in to find her scar with the softest of strokes from his fingertips.

'That's ... Castle, that's m-my ...'

'I know what _that_ is, Kate,' he says, moving his fingers onward from the bullet entry to ply the inner fabric of her bra. He places his forehead against the side of her face, makes to say something, then must think better of it. His fingertips move between her bra and the small scar, the rhythmic gentleness lulling her into relaxing about the sudden intimacy.

His caress of her scar is more intimate than his ravaging touch between her legs, and there is something so intensely hot about his ministrations. A series of small sounds escape from the back of his throat and she feels his lashes drop closed against her cheek.

They could be alone on a yacht as it nooks the coastline of Italy, or lying on a private beach with an endless supply of sexy sun and sand. They could even be shacked-up in her dad's cabin with a bottle of wine, some bread and cheese and a dozen new ideas to create sweet, silky love—

'If we'd not there soon, boys, I'm gonna have to get youse to stop,' says Norbert, from beneath his blindfold.

'Not much further,' says Castle, pulling away from Beckett as she swings the car through the entry to Rodman's Neck.

Norbert whines and fidgets. 'You said that waaaaay back, Chug-a-lug, and this dude scanners broked now and my head? It' f'aches. It f'aches bad.'

'Okay,' says Castle, almost paternally, 'we're just about to—'

'And I really need to pee!'

Beckett pulls the car to a stop and prepares to gain access to the firing range. She and Castle could be alone, anywhere in the world, with just her scar, his rapier wit, a black bikini, his fingers and the banter. But what fun would that be?

* * *

><p>The firing range is prepared for Norbert's arrival and staff have cordoned off a quiet section for the party of five. If Castle was being entirely honest — including sharing the secret about Johanna Beckett's case — he'd admit to feeling exactly like Norbert Pattinson.<p>

About semi-automatic weaponry, anyway.

It's not that he endorses the use of any weapon in the grander scheme of life. Guns, knifes, numchucks, socks stuffed with marbles in a prison situation — terrible tools of destruction when placed in diabolical hands — but as Castle sits in the spectator pit and prepares to watch Pattinson, Gravy and Train take a lesson with Instructor Sven, he gets jittery with excitement. He's next for some one-on-one, badass, holding of the M-something-power-gun of doom.

For all his toys and love of the precinct, Castle has never fired or even held a real—

She wanders into the periphery of his musings and Castle feels his jaw slacken for the fiftieth time that morning. Strutting past him wearing little more than a sexy smile, jeans and shirt is Det. K. Beckett. She puckers her lips in his direction, moving much like he'd imagine she'd do if she was stalking him in her _boudoir._

They're not even in France, despite his use of elements of the language to sprinkle his Beckett to-do list.

_Yeah, but the sexual stalking fantasy in the boudoir? It's been around for a while, hasn't it? _he thinks, checking her out with open admiration. It usually starts as a bit of a laser tag challenge, with Castle having to enforce the 'nudity rule' because an overdressed Beckett is very overrated. Naturally, she doesn't want to lose at laser, so she stalks. And he stalks, and they both end up very, very—

'I got your shirt on or something, Castle?' she asks, moving between Norbert's group and his spectating area two rows back. Why he thought he ever wanted to view machine gun interplay is beyond him. Not when he can observe semi-autoerotic girl play worked by his favourite boudoir bunny.

_Hmm, speaking of rabbits, isn't he supposed to be finding a warren somewhere so they can curl up and whisker stuff to each other? He should really get on that–_

'Castle?'

She is just _smoking_...

He'd mourn the fact that her leather jacket is strewn over a plastic chair, except for the amazing sight that is Kate Beckett lifting a denim-clad leg up and over the same seat. She bangs her heel down on the hard surface and stretches, filling his entire view with every inch of her. Even fully clothed, she has the ability to switch him on like nothing else.

'This shirt must be real familiar. You can't seem to look away.'

'If you were wearing my shirt, I'd want it back. Have to rip it off you.'

He manages to grunt, but something about his tone must rub her buds because she turns and faces him fully. Tracking his eyes, she tosses him a glance filled with challenge and white-hot desire, and he knows it has something to do with their time in the car. She might be remembering his fingers against the seam of her jeans, the way she responded to his touch as readily as if they were reaching across their bed to make the connection real. She's thinking about his teasing while she was trying to concentrate on the traffic. She wants revenge. It's in her eyes, it's in the crank of her posture and the subtle flare of her nostrils.

Castle grins. _Payback's a bitch,_he thinks, sitting back in the most uncomfortable seating in NYC and marvelling that the front of his pants are as hard as the plastic propping up his ass.

'You ever worn one of these?' she mouths his way, one heel still propped against the chair, one foot on the ground. For a joyous second, Castle thinks she's going to undo her jeans and show him exactly what she _is_ wearing, but when she reaches into her bag and finds something black, strappy, weaponry, his mouth dries anyway. She's as good in her jeans as out of them.

In public.

Later on, Castle will be happy to prove that she might be even better _sans _denim, but at the moment he's content to watch and—

'It's a thigh holster, Castle. You seen these?'

_Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes he has._ She's worn them occasionally, in the same pair of jeans that's she has on today, and each time he's barely been able to keep his eyes off the prize. If EVER Kate Beckett wanted to demonstrate the shape of her upper legs and how very close a thigh holster can be worn to the inner seam, it's when she straps on that particular item.

'I know you've seen me wear it before,' she whispers, ducking forward just enough for him to see her shirt fall away from her skin. Maintaining this position, she looks upwards as she straps via touch alone, and catches him witnessing the scene as it unfolds.

Castle has never watched a woman watching him watch her in such an intimate, public, sizzling way, and the visual fireworks alone are enough to have him buck the chain that's holding him. He feels like a restrained doberman. Chained to the back fence, fur razzed, teeth snarling, thick, strong neck pulling against the cuff that binds. He's on heat. It's impossible, gender-wise, but the silkiest pet in the neighbourhood is sauntering past and he just can't get to her.

_Grrrrrrrrrr_...

He's canine and it doesn't matter if he breaks free and mounts her in a firing range, where she's supposed to be professional and he's supposed to be a gentleman, not a beast. But the guns? The phallic-feel of the place. The power, hard steel, the weapon as metaphor for pen—

'You okay there, Castle?'

He's not: Beckett manipulating the holster around her thigh, wriggling in time with the adjustment. Beckett leaning forward for his eyes only, arching an eyebrow and her cleavage his way, appearing to revel in the joy of the show. Beckett grinning like a Cheshire cat without the stripes and with the best body he has seen in a lifetime of fake bits and pieces. Beckett looking at him as though she loves the banter of the game.

The anticipation, the game, the wonder of watching Kate Beckett find the fun in life as she plays along. With him. She's chosen him. It's intoxicating, spikes his blood, and he has every intention of continuing the intensity even after she's had him every which-way until Sunday.

And she will have him.

'There's one thing you haven't seen with regard to this holster, _Rick._'

Castle allows himself a millisecond to wonder whether she'll call him Rick in bed, and whether it will involve something like _ohhhhhhhh, Rick_, or if she'll weave in that emotional, heartstring stuff she does so well, _what about you, Rick? Do you feel that, Rick? Do you love me, Rick? Did you know I love you, Rick?_ Or if it will be smothered in liquid heat like _I want you, Rick, I've always wanted you. In me ..._

He can fantasize all he wants, but nothing compares to the reality of Kate Beckett picking up an automatic pistol, running her fingers along the barrel in more of a caress than cop assessment of a piece, and working it into her holster as though it's the greatest feeling in the world. The inferences are not lost on him. They jar him from his plastic chair faster than a worked-up doberman would sprint from the blocks once the muzzle is removed. He is by her side just as she moves forward to claim one of the rifles.

'So, Bambette?' says Norbert, turning to Beckett, as Castle camps by her side and runs his hand down her outer thigh. It's nice that her body shields his groping from the rest of the group. He wants to touch-up that leg holster on the way down. He grins as she shudders in response to the trail of his fingers, and he leaves his hand at the strap of the holster.

'Bambette?' Castle hears Beckett bite back at Norbert. Her voice is choked and her stance so stiff, Castle thinks twice about making this tactile play at that particular moment.

He mutters as he removes his hand 'don't think that I'll forget it's there', and she visibly relaxes next to him, ready to square-off with Norbert.

'Ye-ha _Bambette_. You and Chug-a-lug, so Disney, yanno? You is so like Bambi, Detective Gal. All I can say, babe, is that youse like a deer. Bambi. Bambette. Detective Bambette.'

Sven has the decency to look horrified. Beckett outranks him and Castle appreciates the fellow-cop deferring to protocol. 'It's Detective _Beckett_,' grizzles Sven, 'and she's gonna show us all how to shoot one of these police-approved weapons.'

Castle baulks. He thought he'd be in charge of the fantasy at weapon time. That he'd be choosing the run of images. He'd even retracted his hand in deference to Kate and her professional demeanor in front of the Demming clone. But this? Beckett shooting an automatic weapon that now looks like ...

_Looks like ... oh, but it looks like ... um, she's now the epitome of HBIC, a swanky, lanky, wave of heat and gun ... and it's ... it's killing him to ... _

Castle sits down with a clutter. He's had the presence of mind to grope for the row of plastic seating that is close to where he originally sat, grasp for the earmuffs and die quietly. Kate Beckett lifts a 10mm Heckler & Koch MP5, attaches it to her body, flips her hair about like she's a sexy, brunette Charlie's Angel and preps. It's perhaps the hottest thing Castle has ever seen her do, although her comic book knowledge might just come a close second.

Nowhere near close, he realizes, as she props. Aims. Swizzles hips and hair and her entire upper body into synchronized submachine gun sex and shimmer, power, synergy, sensuality. And ... _fires_.

Once, twice, and again, with throb and roar and a spray of bullets, with Castle watching and trying to process without salivating or shooting prematurely himself.

Even with protective glasses and ear equipment, she is sublime. He couldn't write this scene if he tried, but just as he is about to wrest the gun away from her and find her thigh holster with his own version of a non-semi-automatic, the action before him plays out in slow motion. Castle watches Kate lower her gun, throw off her eyewear and look towards their visiting film star. He sees Norbert hop about like a mad vampire cousin from Twilight, and he hears words. Smatterings of sentences that sound like pain and condemnation and ... perhaps pigeon English?

'Oyyyyyy. Oyyyyy oy, fuckity fuck, Bambette! The rich-o-chet! Some hit me. In foot. My foot. Bleeding. The bullet from the ricochet ... lookit my foot, beyotch ...'

Castle sighs. It seems Norbert has been grazed on the ankle by something and the air is ringing with accusations about 'Bambette' and her 'qualitications'. Pity a ricochet didn't hit him in the mouth. Or maybe that'll be Castle's fist.


	9. Chapter 9

_Thanks so much for the lovely comments regarding the last chapter. All writers love feedback. It helps us to continue and motivates us to improve. I think there will be 3 more chapters of this one. The aim has been to keep it humourous, to try and balance the love-lust stuff, to have some fun and offer some alternatives. _

_I really liked the episode 'Cuffed'. A lot. There are a couple of instances in this chapter where I allude to it, as if in a snide way, but I don't mean it to be negative about the episode or the way canon are depicting a couple in love. It's used for humourous purposes only._

_Happy Sunday!_

* * *

><p><strong>Anticipation is like an episode about cuffing. A pussy in tiger clothing.<strong>

It's a waste of time taking Norbert to the ER, but he is so insistent that they bundle him into the back of the car and drive him to the closest hospital. The blood has dried as quickly as it appeared.

After being given a clean bill of health, Gravy and Train sit either side of their employer on the way back to the precinct. They alternate between stroking Norbert's brow, massaging the foot that was grazed by the ricochet, and kissing him so explicitly, Kate has to look twice in the rearview mirror to ensure she's not imagining the One True Threesome.

_Nope, there it is_. Gravy kissing Norbert. The actor smooching back until he's satisfied, then turning to Train who is waiting with opened lips and accommodating tongue. Their actions are accompanied by a series of sensual sounds. Moans, grunts, murmurs. Guttural sighs. The verbal waves of suggestion are drowning Beckett in frustration and red-raw savagery. It's the last thing she wants paraded in the backseat the car. Except if it involves Castle, herself and a pair of padded handcuffs—

'I thought Norbert Pattinson was heterosexual,' Castle whispers, leaning over the console again. His closeness has Beckett thinking of the earlier drive to Rodman's Neck. It was sexy as hell. The touching, his breath on her cheek, him using the seam of her jeans to advantage. The memory brings a flush to her face and makes her see crimson about the hours still left to kill before she can get him alone.

Will Castle think less of her if she suggests a place that rents rooms by the hour for their first time? It's not like they're teenagers. They should be able to wait a couple of hours, to revel in the foreplay of anticipation and keep body parts within clothing—

'You do know how much that thigh holster turns me on?' he says in her ear, with that pepper of moist heat. Castle's hand moves over the strap of the holster again and he thumbs the band. A shiver sends a whisper down her spine, and the wet leaves her hot between her legs. _Je-sus. She needs it soon. She wants it. Does she really care if he thinks she's a ho with a thing for quickies on moth-eaten duvets? He knows her better than that, but she'd do him standing in the middle of this street if they didn't have to babysit Robert Pattinson's cuz._

The sharpening of her recent emotions — affection, readiness to let her mother's case go to pursue something real, attraction, _love_— has heightened this thing called desire.

_Wow_, at this silent admission, a bang of endorphins flood her pleasure zones. She's balancing the love-lust equation for the first time and it's as erotic as it is scary. It's like diving off the highest platform. She's ready for that exhilaration, the plunge before the hit of a hard wet.

'Castle, could—'

'And the semi-automatic, too. I'm glad you left the holster on. Pity you left the weapon behind.'

'I had to.' She bites down on further explanation because she's going to tremble. 'But Castle?'

'Yes, Kate?'

He's placing those damn skillful fingers at lower angles against the thigh strap, revisiting a similar path to the seam action from earlier. Kate doesn't want that again — _yeah, but she does_. She needs more, _him_, but not now. Not in the car.

_But he won't leave her alone._

'Do you know how hot you are when you put your gun into this thing,' he asks, touching the material of the holster while rambling fingers stroke the denim along her inner thigh. 'And when you tuck your pistol down the back of your jeans, I nearly—'

'Can y'all get this thong going a tad faster, Chug-a-lug? Tell Bambette to groove her lube, why doncha. Day's getting old.'

Norbert draws his mouth away from his suck-face to hurl a couple of insults into the front of the car and Beckett feels Castle's fingers stop. She has the sudden urge to kill something. Preferably a two-bit actor with a fake cockney accent, a huge ego and tiny vocabulary. She used to like Demming. A lot. If he got into her car right about now, she'd slap him for his physical similarity to the idiot in the back.

'Hey Norbert,' says Castle, with a typical genial tone. Kate looks sideways for a moment and Castle winks at her. God, they're getting cozy. Pity they can't get naked with that cozy. She siphons the smile that threatens to interrupt her annoyance. 'Why don't you work on a facet of Rook's character right now and learn some real names?'

'Why?' he asks, snogging Gravy as his hand touches the bulge at the front of Train's pants. 'Youse guise are not innit. The movie, that is, youse not the stars. I don't need to knows your names, roight?'

Castle snorts back a laugh. 'Yeah, but Rook is a man of inquiry. He'd want to know everything.'

'Lookie, Chugs. All I wanna knows is what's for lunch, when I can get a good coffee and when I get to meet wif Nat'lie Rhodes. She's a hottie. Woulda loiked Brangelina, but Nat'lie will do.'

'Pity she's in rehab,' says Castle beneath his breath, moving a hand up to massage Kate's shoulder with the gentlest touch. She doesn't want it. It makes her think of all the things they could be doing. Castle doesn't deviate, even when she shrugs at his hand, but draws her closer with his low, gravelly tone. 'With all the Pattinson media about his number of lady loves, I'm just surprised that he's gay. Probably bi—'

'I don't care _what _he is, I just want it to stop.'

Castle moves back as though stung by a waspish hornet. Kate knows he's smiling by the tone of his voice and it makes her more frustrated. 'Whoa, Beckett! Who made you the threesome Nazi?'

'I don't know, Castle,' she says, driving with more aggression than earlier, but twice as erratically. 'I just like this dude better with a balaclava on his head.'

'And the risqué sounds are annoying you?'

_Aren't they bothering him?_ Of course they're annoying her! _She_ wants to be making those sounds, not listening to other people making sexual overtures with as much noise as two aroused people pushing against a heavy container while cuffed together, unable to touch in case they somehow dilute the sexual tension!

'I think they should just ... shut up?' She looks in her mirror and stops herself snarking at Castle. 'Get a room ... or just ... get a place ... to be ... intimate ...'

_Get a room?_

She sneers through her nose in exasperation. This entire day — the dawn call, Gates's orders, the ricocheting bullet — why did they have to coincide with her dawning realization about love and lust and other things starting with 'L?'

_Lying down, loft sex, loitering nude, languishing in bed, loofahing bodies in her shower. Licking. Legs. Libidos ..._

'Kate?'

She plunges her mind into the present. He's there in her past and future and she's so infatuated, it's ridiculous.

'They're not making it easy to concentrate, Castle, if that's what you're asking.'

She knows he's not. She can feel the weight of his palm against her thigh once more. There's no way Norbert and Co will realize that Castle is touching her at this stage, even without their blindfolds and scanning apps, but Beckett is vexed enough to want to slap Castle's hand away. When she doesn't, he seems surprised.

'I have a plan,' he says, and part of Kate's libido sinks. She knows how this is going to end. Interrupted, flurried, graphically pissed.

It had been fun earlier this morning. She'd played up the motorcycle posture, had taken off her helmet as though she was shucking her shirt, had used the thigh holster as the ultimate prop of revenge for the teasing in the car. Kate had even worked the interrogation room to her advantage. She'd gone in thinking that making out on the table would yank Castle's chains, that it'd would poke at one of his ultimate fantasies. She came out of that room with a greater understanding of herself. Her _needs_.

That fantasy is _hers_. As is the kissing on a Harley, having his eyes bore into her back while she wields something semi-automatic, and touching him just out of sight of Captain Fumey Gates.

She's lived every aspect of her Rick Castle fantasies this morning and now she's sick of not acting on them. She's in the mood to be assertive, to initiate and press, undress, flick at his fly and use her mouth on him ... if they could just find some—

'Pull over there, Kate,' says Castle suddenly, as though his cock has the power to read her mind. _Now there's a thought._She'd love to tell him about this kink she has in her Castle armour, that she'd like him to be sexual assertive, to lead without her having to make the initial move in the dance. It always works so well, when she instigates non-romantic things, but there's a part of Beckett that wants him confident and dominant in the first instance.

The fact that he was during his denim-over-lace manoeuvre clicks up her wattage to a roar of heated hope. He hadn't been on the bike or in the interrogation room, but if he makes the moves when it counts, Beckett will fold before the dealer has even got his hand into her personal space.

_Shit_. Her mouth is drier than any other part of her body, the moisture dwindling between her breast cloys at her heart and kicks her lower verve into gear. She finds a terrible place to double park and is about to turn around and order the _ménage_ to stop _trois-ing_, but before she can (or think about telling Castle that she'd love him to take her somewhere and consensually raze her) he's pulling out his phone and speaking 'Ricky' into the mouthpiece.

He's smooth. He's confident and dropping studio names, chatting entitlements, contracts, deals and what he has said to whom in the past. Kate is caught in the crossfire of Castle negotiating on the phone, Gravy Train whining, and Pattinson asking why they'd stopped. For a moment, her head is spinning so fast, she feels like a diabetic with a face full of candy floss just after she's disembarked from a whizzy ride. She needs to get out of the car, breathe some pristine, downtown NYC air.

Kate slams the car door on the testosterone. She leans against the driver's side, unfazed by passing traffic and buzzing city sounds, trying to get a handle on another one of Castle's plans and what might be in it for both of them. Time alone? Freedom from a movie entourage of three? Coitus interruptus even before the ball is in the coit.

She'd settle for a hot make out session on a couch which has just enough room for—

'Beckett?'

Castle pips out of his door and jack-in-the-boxes his head over the car roof to toy a smile her way. Her heart warbles a combination of silly love song and sex rock, and she's so struck by Cupid she feels vulnerable, exposed, foolish, empowered and excited all at once.

_What the fuck?_

'Where's the closest helipad?'

Just as she thought: _WTF? _But his grin draws words from her as easily as it increases her heart rate. She knows helipads like all cops know city egress points. 'Two blocks east of here, on top of—'

He's on the phone again and she's murmuring the rest of the details to the crowded sidewalk.

Bending back into the car, Kate notices Pattinson, Gravy and Train have resumed their smut-fest, letting hands roam freely, mouths straying south, groans hitting the air with the rabidness of a modern-day porn movie. She waits for Castle to sit and explain. He does sit down, but spends a few seconds watching the show in the back seat.

'_Castle?_

It's laced with humour. She's relieved to see that Castle is as affected by the unnerving antics as she continues to be.

'Right, yes,' he says, straightening the snug of his pants so that he's more comfortable. The play of material across his groin snatches at her imagination and she wonders just how much he's been packing in his piece — not that she's interested in comparing size and weight. She's all about the finesse and mischief-making as far as Castle is concerned. Sort of. And she's crazy 'bout him. Yeah, kinda. Because ... there's this love and lust thing happening and ...

_For crying out loud, now she's feeling horny in her heartstrings as well?_ When he turns to her with this look that shanks want and love, her chest concaves into rubble.

'I've organized an aerial tour of New York for our special guests, Beckett,' Castle says, loud enough to be heard over the Choir of the Erogenous. 'The studio owed me a ... a ... favour, and ... _Kate? _What's wrong?'

_Her eyes are his window to her soul. There are less places to hide what she's feeling._

'Nothing. Castle, nothing,' she says, holding out her hand and catching his on his thigh. Castle looks like he might turn gaseous and helium his own airship over NYC. 'I was just ... listening to what you were saying. The, um, aerial tour?'

Castle straightens, keeps her hand trapped under his own and turns to face the front of the car. 'We don't need to go, Kate,' he says out of the side of his mouth. 'The tour? We can put the three of them on it ... a couple of hours tops, I thought we might ... I thought we might ... um, can I take you out for lunch?'

He keeps his eyes ahead. She doesn't answer, but smothers her mirth with an arched eyebrow. 'It's 10.45 am.'

'Coffee? I'll take you out for coffee. A coffee date, Beckett. No strings attached, and you don't know how excited about this I've bean ... um, _bean _as in—'

'Don't tell me you're making coffee jokes now, Castle,' she says, gunning the engine as hormones gun through time and space to frisk her sexual furrows. This is gonna be some hot coffee, she cannot wait for the heat to filter through her system. '_And_ trying to explain the joke as well?'

'No explanation needed, Beckett. You know that. I'm just thinking of other ways to get into your Gloria Jeans ... oh, I mean to get you _into _Gloria Jeans.'

She'd laugh, but Castle finally shifts his sights and pops his head through the seat to interrupt threesome paradise. 'Get ready you famous people,' he says and Norbert's head flicks around immediately. 'We've organized a sightseeing trip that you'll never forget, at the studio's behest. You'll be airborne before you know it.'

Driving sedately for the first time in a day, Beckett takes that as literally as he's intended.

* * *

><p>They throw options around like they're choosing chocolates from a box of decadent favourites. His loft, her apartment, a playroom — she laughs it out between the first time he kisses her, and the increasing realization that he's going to be assertive — or the closet hotel.<p>

'_The Surrey?_' she says, when he puts it out there. She's just about to restart the engine after depositing the threesome with the studio-approved helicopter tour, but Castle can't seem to stop finding her lips with his own. It's car kissing. Crowded, awkward, a flail of hands on buttons, heads at angles, mouths misdirecting tongues and teeth. 'That's kinda a waste. We have to be back in two hours, Cas—'

He pulls her hand away from the steering wheel, crowds her over the console of the car and kisses her with such shocking intensity, she struggles to open her eyes when he draws away for the first time. He nudges her lips further apart for a second taste, groaning his tongue into her mouth, then retracts for the second instance, but her eyes are still closed and his forehead is pressed against her own.

'After ... afterwards, um, after we finish ...'

He clears his throat, sits up and smooths out her hair. She feels his fingers at her buttons and wants him inside her shirt, pressing and thumbing, down beneath her underwear, touching and circling, but all he does is make movements to straighten everything. As though if they pretend to concentrate on being less disheveled, they'll forget the howl of sexual crank that's straining to be ... _cranked?_

Beckett opens her eyes to find Castle looking straight ahead, holding her hand in a neutral position on the central console. 'After we finish at the precinct for the day, Beckett, um, I propose ... I propose ... I want to propose that ...'

'_You want to propose?_' she echoes, grateful for the humourous coping mechanism they both use on occasion.

'I propose to ask you back to our suite at The Surrey,' he says, deadpan, but she feels a gentle squeeze to her hand and the subtle deepening of his voice. 'And perhaps we can go out for dinner, take the night to get to know ... get to know ...'

'Each other?' she teases, driving so badly, she wonders if she needs an academy refresher course.

'The place. Get to know the place—'

'The _Surrey?_', she says, adoring the verbal upper hand for the moment. Kate knows she can lose this any time, with just a small physical change to the synergy, so she revels. 'You want to spend time there getting to know The _Surrey?_'

'Yes ... and no. Kate?' He brings her hand to his mouth, dusts her knuckles with his tongue and she's as dissolved as an Oz witch on a wet day. 'I'd like to spend the night there, with you, have some dinner, share a drink. Even ...'

He waits for her to interject, but she's muted. Kate's somewhere between promising the tin man an oil massage and the scarecrow a bristly stuffing. She can feel Castle smiling into her palm as he turns her hand over and kisses the flatter surface. If this is love, she's so far into it, she's unsure what to feel. Where to look.

'We could eve talk about our day. Once we get rid of Pattinson, our time is our own. Kate? And there's no one waiting at home for me this evening.'

If she met the lion on her yellow brick road right about now, Beckett would purr. She feels like lapping and stretching and curling up round Castle's leg, just so he'd keep touching her, keep trilling words in her ear. He's a romantic guy. She's ... well, she's not ... a guy, _or_that romantic, by nature, but God help her. He makes her feel like she's a BAMFing princess who can be queen of his rook for as long as they complement each other on the playing board.

_She doesn't know where to look or how to see with these strange, love-tinged glasses on, so perhaps it's just a matter of feeling. Not over thinking. Instinctual, gut-driven stuff._

'So,' he concludes, and Castle is suddenly mellow, gentlemanly and Beckett wants the promise of assertive back as soon as possible. 'A couple of hours at The Surrey _now_ won't be a total waste if we make an entire night of it, Detective Beckett.'

She nods, eyes on the road, heart on her sleeve that's furthest away from him in case he sees it there and realizes he almost owns it. Not almost. He does, and has for a while.

'Don't know about you, Beckett,' he says, interrupting her quiet contemplation as they stop at lights. According to the navigational system, they're less than ten minutes from the front of The Surrey. The computer-generated voice of the system has never been to The Surrey with Castle, Kate figures, otherwise they'd be some inspiration and colour to the woman's tone.

'Hmm?' is about all she can manage as the lights go green.

'But I'm really looking forward to getting to know The Surrey.'

A laugh bumbles in Kate's throat but it quickly turns into a catch of breath as Castle rumbles words that no one else can hear. Incredibly hot considering that they have no company.

'Apparently the pattern on the mattresses look amazing from the top.'

It's all she can do to stop herself telling him every single fantasy she stores in the plot of her Richard Castle novels right there and then.


End file.
